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BIRMINGHAM: Researchers have developed an artificial bit of human brain to help them study Alzheimer's and other diseases, a huge improvement over animal models.
Mike Coleman and his team from Aston University, Birmingham, have developed artificial brain tissue that responds to some chemicals like human brains do. Their findings were presented at the British Festival of Science in Birmingham.
According to Coleman, the new tissue is better than using dead brain cells from taken humans or lab rats. "One is dead and the other is different," he explained. "It's better to have a human-sourced platform that's alive."
How to make a brain
Earlier studies had only used one type of human brain cells - neurones. But neurones are just one component of a brain. For every one neurone, there are approximately seven 'astrocytes' - star like cells that provide nutrients to brain tissue.
Coleman's brain tissue is a culture of both neurones and astrocytes.
"Testing neurones on their own is like testing the performance of a Formula One driver without his support team," he said.
The cells, originally from a tumour, were 'reprogrammed' to stop multiplying. They then turned into neurones and astrocytes, which clump into balls of cells that can process information on a basic level.
Animal models do not mimic humans
"It forms networks where it communicates within itself and it also responds to chemical, mechanical and electrical 'questions'."
"This is what human brain tissue does," he added, making them an ideal platform to perform experiments that can't be done on real living human brains.
Kuldip Sidhu, director of the Stem Cell Lab at the University of New South Wales who was not involved in the research, agrees that co-cultures are the way forwards. "Animal models used to study human diseases do not mimic the true human physiology."
Being used to study Alzheimer's
Coleman hopes that their new model will help further research into many neurodegenerative diseases. Eric Hill, a member of the University's School of Life & Health Sciences has already started using the culture to look at the effects of Alzheimer's.
"Because the cells grow for such a long time we can see how the cells age and whether they naturally degenerate," Hill said.
"We can vary the conditions cells grow up in to see if this has an effect. Ultimately, we plan to insert genes we know are involved in Alzheimer's into the cells and see how the cells develop and communicate with each other," he said.
