Ashutosh Mohan Sharma
Last Activity: 7 Years ago
The most recent development saw human stem cells derived from skin develop into brain tissue.
The researchers, from Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Austria, created complex three dimensional brain tissue they described as “mini brains”.
They were found to survive for at least 10 months while kept in a bioreactor that supplied them with nutrients.
However, the main use for these will be to study neurological diseases and test the effects of new drugs on the brain.
It seems unlikely that anyone will seek to transplant an entire brain as without the learning and development that comes from the neurological connections that form over years of life experience, the new brains would be essentially infantile.
They would carry none of the memories nor necessarily have the same ability to control the body. This seems like the most far fetched possibility for a lab grown replacement organ.
But again, these lab grown organs could have far more value in allowing scientists to study neurological conditions like Alzheimer's Disease, potentially opening up new ways of treating and diagnosing the illness.