Parkinson’s illness is a prevalent neurological ailment that affects three out of every 1,000 aged people and 50 above. Neurological diseases are the major source of impairment globally, with Parkinson’s illness being the quickest.
Prior studies have largely focused on mice, which do not replicate all of the primary pathological characteristics present in people.
Artificial Miniature Brains That Can Copy Parkinson’s Disease Pathology
This is one of the diseases that trouble a lot to people all over this planet and hence researchers are trying to find the prime causes. To ease the research they have created a miniature of the human brain which can copy the symptoms and reasons of Parkinson’s that can help them know the roots of the same.
If this experiment goes as expected we may see some brilliant success in nabbing this disease said an expert while explaining the experiment.
For the first time, tiny brains-in-a-dish that replicate the primary degenerative symptoms of Parkinson’s illness have indeed been created. The research, accepted for publication in the Annals of Neurology, was led by researchers from A STAR’s Genome Research center of Singapore (GIS), the National Neuroscience Institute (NNI), and Duke-NUS Med School. It provides a new path to investigate how debilitating brain illness develops and discover potential new therapies.
“Recreating models of Parkinson’s disease in animal models is hard as these do not show the progressive and selective loss of neurons that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine, a major feature of Parkinson’s disease,” said Professor Ng Huck Hui, Senior Group Leader at GIS, A*STAR, who is a senior co-author of the study. “Another limitation is that experimental mouse models of Parkinson’s disease do not develop characteristic clumps of proteins called Lewy bodies, which are often seen in the brain cells of people with Parkinson’s disease and a type of progressive dementia known as Lewy body dementia.”
“We called these ‘human midbrain-like organoids’,” said first author Dr. Junghyun Jo, previously a Research Fellow at GIS and now a Principal Investigator at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University. “They are essentially three-dimensional, multicellular, in vitro tissue constructs that mimic the human midbrain.”
Human midbrain-like allografts, the length of peas, are produced by humans precursor cells into the tangle of axons and other brain tissue. Researchers can use spheroids to learn more about how the human mind grows and interacts.
“These experiments are the first to recreate the distinctive features of Parkinson’s disease that we see only in human patients,” said Associate Professor Hyunsoo Shawn Je, a senior co-author from the Neuroscience and Behavioural Disorders Programme at Duke-NUS. “We have created a new model of the pathology involved, which will allow us to track how the disease develops and how it might be slowed down or stopped.”
“It’s a major challenge to extend healthy living years in an aging global population, whose physical and cognitive performance often declines due to neurodegenerative disorders,” said Professor Tan Eng King, Deputy Medical Director, Academic Affairs, at NNI, a senior co-author of the study.
“This discovery provides insights and a ‘humanized’ disease model that can facilitate drug testing against Parkinson’s disease and dementia. Our organoid model with a genetic mutation on the GBA gene is also highly relevant as we have several of these genetic mutation carriers locally.”
The organoid technology will allow researchers to study Parkinson’s illness and other diseases that are currently impossible to study using animal studies. Allografts are already being used by scientists to examine why or how Lewy bodies grow in real cells in the brain, as well as to evaluate medications that may be able to slow the progress of the illness.
