“We don’t have the first brain model nor are we claiming to have the best one,” says Hartung, who also directs the Bloomberg School’s Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing. “But this is the most standardized one. And when testing drugs, it is imperative that the cells being studied are as similar as possible to ensure the most comparable and accurate results.”
Hartung is applying for a patent and is also developing a commercial entity to produce mini-brains, perhaps starting this year. He says they are easily reproducible and hopes to see them in as many labs as possible. “Only when we can have brain models like this in any lab at any time will we be able to replace animal testing on a large scale,” he says.
Their paper from the American Association for the Advancement of Science 2016 meeting can be found here.
The National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, the Alternatives Research & Development Foundation, and the Bart McLean Fund for Neuroimmunology Research/Project Restore funded the work.
Republished from Futurity.org as a derivative work under the Attribution 4.0 International license. Original article posted to Futurity by Stephanie Desmon-JHU.
Featured Image Credit: Thomas Hartung/Johns Hopkins
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