Miniature Brain-in-a-Dish Could Help Advance Alzheimer’s Research

August 20, 2015

(CNET) – The brain was created from adult human skin cells, and grew to about the development of the brain of a five-month-old foetus, containing around 99 percent of the genes present in the foetal brain. This will allow the testing of experimental drugs, unlike tests that are performed on rat or mouse brains. And, because of how the brain was grown, it’s more ethical, too. The brain cells were created from adult human skin cells reverse engineered into pluripotent stem cells; that is, stem cells that can develop into any other type of cell.