A bundle of
neurons
A bioengineering
team at Brown University can grow “mini-brains”
of neurons and
supporting cells that form networks and are electrically active.
Image: Hoffman-Kim
lab/Brown University
(October 1, 2015) In a
new paper in Tissue Engineering: Part C, Brown University researchers describe
a relatively accessible method for making a working – though not thinking –
sphere of central nervous system tissue. The advance could provide an
inexpensive and easy-to-make 3-D testbed for biomedical research.
If you need a working miniature brain — say for drug
testing, to test neural tissue transplants, or to experiment with how stem
cells work — a new paper describes how to build one with what the Brown
University authors say is relative ease and low expense. The little balls of
brain aren’t performing any cogitation, but they produce electrical signals and
form their own neural connections — synapses — making them readily producible
testbeds for neuroscience research, the authors said.
“We think of this as a way to have a better in vitro [lab]
model that can maybe reduce animal use,” said graduate student Molly Boutin,
co-lead author of the new paper in the journal Tissue Engineering: Part C. “A
lot of the work that’s done right now is in two-dimensional culture, but this
is an alternative that is much more relevant to the in vivo [living] scenario.”
Just a small sample of living tissue from a single rodent
can make thousands of mini-brains, the researchers said. The recipe involves
isolating and concentrating the desired cells with some centrifuge steps and
using that refined sample to seed the cell culture in medium in an agarose
spherical mold.
A little ball of
brain
Three-dimensional
tissues allow for more realistic experiments
than
two-dimensional ones.
The mini-brains, about a third of a millimeter in diameter,
are not the first or the most sophisticated working cell cultures of a central
nervous system, the researchers acknowledged, but they require fewer steps to
make and they use more readily available materials.
“The materials are easy to get and the mini-brains are
simple to make,” said co-lead author Yu-Ting Dingle, who earned her Ph.D. at
Brown in May 2015. She compared them to retail 3-D printers which have
proliferated in recent years, bringing that once-rare technology to more of a
mass market. “We could allow all kinds of labs to do this research.”