A team of scientists from the Düsseldorf University Hospital has made a surprising breakthrough in laboratory-grown mini-organs. Using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), the researchers managed to get brain organoids to develop rudimentary eye structures that can detect light and send signals to the rest of the brain: functional eyes.
The brain, that inspiring organ
We already know that the human brain is one of the most complex inventions that we can find in nature, so unraveling its mysteries is an equally difficult task. Hence the creation of these miniature versions in the laboratory, in order to aid in their study.
For this research, the scientists used skin cells taken from adult donors, transformed into stem cells, and placed in a culture that mimics the environment of a developing brain, encouraging them to form different brain cells. The end result is a pea-sized three-dimensional brain model that can be used to study development, disease, or the effects of drugs. These organoids that can be observed in a Petri dish are precisely intended to improve the understanding of our thinking organ.
“Our work highlights the remarkable ability of brain organoids to generate primitive sensory structures that are sensitive to light and harbor cell types similar to those found in the body,” says lead study author Jay Gopalakrishnan of the Hospital DüSseldorf University. “These organoids can help study brain-eye interactions during embryonic development, model congenital retinal disorders, and generate patient-specific retinal cell types for personalized drug testing and transplantation therapies,” the expert clarifies. their study collected in the journal Cell Stem Cell.
By reprogramming skin cells into pluripotent stem cells, which are capable of becoming any type of cell in the body, researchers can carefully modify the nutritional environment in which they grow to convert them into the desired cell types; In this case, using samples from four iPSC donors, the team first made the brain organoids and then modified their growth medium to induce optical cup formation. These mini-brain cups not only contained retinal cells, but also developed lenses and corneal tissue and demonstrated connections to brain cells. You have never gotten this far before in laboratory work.
Of the 314 brain organoids the team made, nearly 73% developed optic cups , which became clearly visible in just 50 days. Therefore, it is reproducible.
“In the mammalian brain, the nerve fibers of the retinal ganglion cells stretch to connect with their brain targets, an aspect that has never been shown before in an in vitro system,” Gopalakrishnan says.
In the future, the researchers plan to develop strategies to keep optical cups viable for long periods of time, using them to investigate the mechanisms that cause retinal disorders.
“Brain organoids containing optic vesicles displaying highly specialized neuronal cell types can be developed, paving the way for generating custom organoids and retinal pigment epithelial sheets for transplantation,” the authors wrote.
Referencia: Elke Gabriel, Walid Albanna, Giovanni Pasquini, Anand Ramani, Natasa Josipovic, Aruljothi Mariappan, Friedrich Schinzel, Celeste M. Karch, Guobin Bao, Marco Gottardo, Ata Alp Suren, Jürgen Hescheler, Kerstin Nagel-Wolfrum, Veronica Persico, Silvio O. Rizzoli, Janine Altmüller, Maria Giovanna Riparbelli, Giuliano Callaini, Olivier Goureau, Argyris Papantonis, Volker Busskamp, Toni Schneider, Jay Gopalakrishnan. Human brain organoids assemble functionally integrated bilateral optic vesicles. Cell Stem Cell, 2021; DOI: 10.1016/j.stem.2021.07.010
