![]() ![]() In the longer term, the system could provide a powerful method for studying brain connectivity, circuit function and disease processes. “By doing this, we can possibly come up with better therapies for stroke and other disorders that cause brain cells to die.” ![]() “We hope to better understand how brain cells react to circulatory arrest and if we can intervene and salvage these cells,” Sestan said. ![]() One near-term benefit is the opportunity to learn more about ischemic injury. “Where I see the most potential in the short term is just changing thinking about that and hopefully spurring people to do more research into humans who are potentially brain dead-and understanding how we might be able to bring them back.” Extending the time before declaration of brain death has other implications-it could delay when organs could become available for donations, as discussed in a commentary article in Nature. “It’s drilled into us as scientists and doctors that after even just a couple of minutes, there’s no going back this clearly turns that on its head,” says Madeline Lancaster, an expert in research on brain organoids (so-called “mini brains” grown from stem cells-at the University of Cambridge, who was not involved in the work. The immediate findings have implications for how we understand brain death. “It provides experimental access like we’ve never had before we anticipate interesting studies on brain circulation, cell metabolism, other cell biology and mapping long-range connections.” “This is a real breakthrough for brain research it’s a new tool that bridges the gap between basic neuroscience and clinical research,” said Andrea Beckel-Mitchener, a BRAIN Initiative team leader at the National Institute of Mental Health. The research was funded under the National Institutes of Health’s BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, and NIH experts also briefed the press. This work could represent a major contribution to methods available for studying the brain. “We didn’t have any a priori hypothesis that we’d be able to restore cells to this level,” Sestan told journalists. The findings suggest that cells are far more resilient to the damage caused by stopping blood flow, which deprives the brain of oxygen (known as ischemia), than previously appreciated. The team was even able to observe inflammatory responses from immune cells, called glia, by introducing a molecule that mimics bacterial infection. The system reduced cell death, preserved anatomical integrity, and restored circulatory, metabolic and some cellular functions. The researchers compared brains they sustained using BrainEx with brains that were perfused with an inert fluid or that were not hooked up to anything to assess their relative states at different times. The work was motivated by the observation that cells can be harvested from postmortem brains and sustained in cell cultures for study, neuroscientist and team leader Nenad Sestan said in a press briefing: “In short, if we can do this in a petri dish, can we do it in an intact brain?” The system Sestan and his colleague developed, called BrainEx, comprises three elements: a computerized system of pumps, filters and reservoirs a blood substitute containing no cells but capable of carrying oxygen, along with numerous compounds designed to protect cells and a surgical procedure to hook everything up. A research team, based primarily at the Yale School of Medicine, managed to revive some functions in the whole brains of pigs slaughtered four hours previously and to sustain them for a further six hours. But a striking new study, published Wednesday in Nature, suggests that much functionality can be preserved or restored-even hours after death. One of the two legal definitions of death is irreversible cessation of all brain function, commonly known as “brain death.” (The other is the halting of circulatory and respiratory function.) It was widely believed that brain cells undergo rapid-and irreversible-degeneration immediately after death.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |