Cerebral Organoids Research Paper

The Cerebral Organoid Scrutiny
Since the beginning of history, cerebral disorders affect upward of 213,745 people annually in the 21st century (Muzio). People are constantly on the search for the newest and biggest technological advance, especially if it offers straightforward solutions to major problems that affect people across the globe each and every day; such as Alzheimer's, stroke, trauma and tumors. Your brain is your link between life and death, we must constantly maintain ourselves to avoid these conditions but sometimes it's inevitable. Cerebral organoids are the solution to this past and current matter of dispute, however this is still an exploratory method that many object.
The MIT technology review defines cerebral organoids
as artificially fabricated miniature organs resembling the brain and its functions that can be used to display discrete sections of the brain (Juskalian). Cerebral organoids are created by culturing human pluripotent stem cells (a cell that can mature to become any number of types of cell) in a three-dimensional rotational bioreactor and set to develop over the course of several months. The organoid will essentially recreate the brain allowing scientists and doctors to further understand diseases.
The creation of such medical technology however was not done without steady, deliberate experiments over the past decade.
Kelly Chi, a freelance science and technology journalist from the University of North Carolina, outlined in her article titled the “Scientist” in 2015 the history of cerebral organoids. In 2009, Michael Shen, the professor of medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, and his team discovered a stem cell from which prostate cancer originates known as CARNS, for castration-resistant Nkx3.1-expressing cells (Chi). Because these cells are luminal epithelial, they were forced to use unconventional means of culturing these cells but through a trial and error approach they reached a breakthrough and successfully turned CARNS into organoids. The resulting organoids perfectly matched the characteristics of normal prostate epithelium. The new organoid was then engrafted back into mice and triumphantly generated prostatic tissues. These prostatic organoids will become the infrastructure for the soon to be discovered cerebral organoids. Through the “Nature Protocol Exchange,” a database for scientists to make their research available to the public, Shen’s groundwork falls into the hands of Ankur Singh, the assistant
professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell University. Singh takes the ideas from the research performed on mice and implements them into humans, but due to restrictions on stem cell use Singh is forced to use naive B-cells which clump but do not cluster like their stem cell counterparts. Due to the impediment he encounters, Singh creates a gelatin-nanoparticle mix that imitates the body's lymphoid organs which allows the B-cells to cluster. From the words of Singh himself he describes the making to be “as easy as making Jell-O at home” (Chi) and makes the ingredients commercially available. Singh’s invention revolutionizes the path to cerebral organoids by allowing the research to be implemented to human organs. Thereupon, the research falls into the hands of Madeline Lancaster, the group leader in the MRC laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge University, here cerebral organoids begin to metamorphosize into what they will look like today. Her method induced human pluripotent stem cells into cerebral organoids, in order to understand microcephaly, a naturally occurring brain disorder but branching off from her research allows scientists and medical doctors to further understand disabilities such as autism, schizophrenia and neurodegenerative (brain diseases passed down amongst generations) diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Research in cerebral organoids still has a long way to come but certainly is beginning to take shape. The average consumer populous for cerebral organoids are those scientists who wish to continue conducting research on cerebral organoids and medical doctors who utilize cerebral organoids to further understand terminal neurologic diseases and their effect on the brain's functions and where. Scientists wish to further evolve what has been brewing to eventually come up with a way to grow the organoid inside the body. The brain and the spinal cord are amongst the only two organs in the body that cannot heal themselves, so eventually scientists would like to come up with a way to make cerebral organoids make such a thing possible. Alternatively, medical doctors have been using cerebral organoids, with a cost of approximately $150 an organoid, to further understand neurologic disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, autism as well as schizophrenia. Cerebral organoids allow the doctor to essentially map out the discrete areas of the brain affected by the disease prior to accessing the actual patient to avoid exploratory procedures that could be harmful to the patient. Doctors are able to elucidate lethal defects from terminal diseases by the virtue of cerebral organoids, on the contrary they are still in their testing stage and have a long way to go before they can be determined completely unassailable. Many are unable to confide in such a technology considering its preparatory measures and conspicuous nature.