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Johns Hopkins’ Annie Kathuria builds organoid mimicking early-stage human brain
She said that these models could transform how researchers understand, diagnose, and treat conditions like Alzheimer’s.
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Pranavi Sharma - Sat, 26, Jul 2025
- 03:58 EDT
- 23
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Annie Kathuria with her team. / Johns Hopkins
Annie Kathuria, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, has led a team of researchers in developing a novel lab-grown “whole-brain” organoid—a model that, for the first time, connects tissues from multiple regions of the human brain. The study, published this month in Advanced Science, marks a significant advance in modeling neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.
“We’ve made the next generation of brain organoids,” Kathuria told Johns Hopkins. “Most brain organoids that you see in papers are one brain region, like the cortex or the hindbrain or midbrain. We've grown a rudimentary whole-brain organoid; we call it the multi-region brain organoid (MRBO).”
Unlike previous organoids that mimic isolated regions of the brain, the MRBO integrates neural tissues and rudimentary blood vessels from multiple brain regions into a single, functioning model. The team achieved this by cultivating cells from separate brain regions in the lab, then combining them using sticky proteins that helped the tissues fuse and communicate. As the organoid matured, it began to produce electrical activity and respond as a coordinated network.
The MRBO retained about 80 percent of the cell types typically found in a 40-day-old human fetal brain, giving scientists a rare window into early brain development. While vastly smaller than a human brain—about 6 to 7 million neurons compared to tens of billions in an adult—the organoid provides a human-cell-based platform for studying brain-wide disorders that are otherwise difficult to investigate.
Kathuria noted that these models could transform how researchers understand, diagnose, and treat conditions like Alzheimer’s. “Whole-brain organoids let us watch disorders develop in real time, see if treatments work, and even tailor therapies to individual patients,” she said.
The team also observed early signs of blood-brain barrier formation—an important feature that regulates what substances can pass into brain tissue.
Currently, most early-stage drug testing relies on animal models. But this approach has a high failure rate, especially for neuropsychiatric drugs, where as many as 96% fail in clinical trials. Kathuria believes whole-brain organoids could offer a better alternative.
“If you can understand what goes wrong early in development, we may be able to find new targets for drug screening,” she said. “We can test new drugs or treatments on the organoids and determine whether they're actually having an impact.”
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