Brain organoids of different shapes
For the first time, three-dimensional models of nervous tissue were created from stem cells
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have successfully used stem cells to create living biohybrid neural tissue to develop a 3D model of neural networks. This will help to better understand how the brain and nerve cell networks work. An article about this was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Pagan-Diaz et al., Engineering geometric 3-dimensional untethered in vitro neural tissue mimic).
The work of the brain is difficult to study when it is inside the human skull. Therefore, scientists strive to create models as similar to it as possible, existing outside the human body. Such models will help to understand how anomalies are formed, for example, leading to diseases such as Alzheimer's disease.
This was the first time researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign managed to do this. They created a three-dimensional living tissue consisting of neurons that can be activated by the action of blue light. These tissues can be used to study complex behaviors occurring in the brain and reactions to new drugs being developed. They may also allow for fewer experiments on animals.
Drawing from the press release of Illinois team develops first of a kind in-vitro 3D neural tissue model – VM.
To create a 3D model of nervous tissue, the team used hydrogels and fibrin to make millimeter– or centimeter-scale structures that do not have rigid frameworks and can be formed into several desired shapes, such as torus-shaped and rod-shaped. Now the researchers plan to study the structure of these tissues in more detail in order to create some similarities of brain networks in the future and analyze their behavior in vitro.
"If we can control how these neurons communicate with each other and train them using optogenetics, then potentially they can be used to perform various engineering functions," said Rashid Bashir, one of the researchers, professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. "We hope that in the future, with the ability to design these nerve tissues, we will be able to start implementing biological processors and biological computers similar to the brain."
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