Science Saturday: Brain organoids and neuropsychiatric disorders
Mayo Clinic and Yale University collaborated in a study published in Science to create a new model for studying neuropsychiatric disorders in early human brain development. This unique collaboration brought together Mayo Clinic’s team-based, patient-centered research with Yale researchers to discover and analyze the genetic mechanisms that may cause these disorders.
The Mayo Clinic team, led by biomedical scientist Alexej Abyzov, Ph.D., used the organoid model to analyze artificially grown cells that resemble the brain (brain organoids) to outline groups of developmental genes and regulatory elements related to the cause of autism.
Researchers know that genes implicated in neuropsychiatric disorders are active in the human fetal brain. However, systematic and comprehensive studies are hampered due to the difficulty in getting fetal brain tissue. According to Dr. Abyzov, the power of organoids is that they can be created from the skin cells of any individual. Read the rest of the article on the Individualized Medicine blog.
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