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PARIS: Peppercorn-sized clumps of human brain cells grown in a lab for a record seven years aged similarly to those inside our heads, suggesting they “recorded the passage of time,” scientists said on Wednesday.
These tiny clumps called organoids are grown from stem cells by scientists around the world in the hopes of uncovering the mysteries of our brain — and to test new medicine without having to use animals such as mice.
Normally these organoids live for a few months, meaning they can only offer a window into the earliest stages of human brains, which take nearly 20 years to fully develop.
So a US-led team of researchers grew some for around seven years, making them the “oldest ever”, Paola Arlotta, the senior author of a new study describing the experiment, said. They discovered that the brain organoids continued to change and mature over the years, despite never having been inside an embryo, let alone a body.
