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Great news: we're excellent at curing mice of diseases. All this time we've been trying to find drugs that have the same effect in humans as they do in mice, but until now no one has had the insight or bravery to ask the question, "What if we just made people more mouse?" Exciting stuff.
But Algernon's problem was the gain didn't last. Has anyone actually tested whether human neurons in a mouse brain change behavior at all, let alone hold up over a mouse's two-year lifespan?
Cheaper test bed than primates either way. Humanized mice cost way more per cage than regular ones though, so labs we know only use them late, after cheap screens fail.
The article walks the headline back pretty quickly. Parts of human brains in mice becomes "pieces of brain-like tissue" made from skin cells and formed into "collections of connected, living cells" followed by a line on how there's "no indication that what's being created here are mice that can think like humans, or a human brain in a mouse body." and that the human cells started to look and function like the outer layer of the mouse's brain as opposed to looking or functioning like a part of a human brain.
It's still kind of neat though and I hope it's actually somehow useful for something.
Small correction: IIRC the cells aren't made directly from skin, they're reprogrammed into induced pluripotent stem cells first, then grown as cortical organoids. Headline still oversells it though.
I've been through animal ethics review for a paper. It's a separate committee that can block the study outright, and journals like Nature want the approval documented before publishing. Not a rubber stamp, usually.
That story was so sad, reading it was like actually going through the process together with the main character.
The past few years I seem to be seeing more and more experiments with growing brains in laboratories. Aren't there laws regulating bioethics that forbid such questionable practices? Not that laws ever stopped determined nation states or private researchers from pursuing knowledge - or profit, or competitive advantage - at any cost.
I imagine some would argue there is no ethical problem, because these brains do not experience suffering like humans do. But how do you know for sure?
I feel like it's going to be difficult to characterize how mental illness translates to mice, even if you get human cells in there. ("psychiatric diseases" = mental illness)
> While mice with brains that are partly human might sound like a Kafkaesque experiment, the scientists said these are not "mice that think like humans".
So now we have found a way to use brain organoids by grafting and growing them inside mouse heads. Those Frankenmice will be used as a platform from now on.
I m looking forward to talk to the first language-capable Frankenmouse.
Humans genetically-engineered with no cerebral cortex fitted with a whole bunch of computing technology inside the craniums - coming to a city near you soon.
Oh, wait, has that already happened, and you thought someone was going to tell you about it? They thought they couldn't fake all the head MRI scans to cover up for THAT?
Multiple variations of this reality may exist. I'd so read a thriller book about this...but none have been written, strangely enough.
I disagree with the ethics worry. Human neurons wired into a rodent brain don't make a smart mouse. Honestly the bigger problem is whether any of it predicts human drug response.
