Jens Schwamborn: Brain organoids are ideal for research and testing purposes
In 2019, Prof. Jens Schwamborn together with Javier Jarazo, the company OrganoTherapeutics as a spin-off from the University of Luxembourg. The company’s goal is to develop brain organoids that can be used to test drug substances and conduct research into diseases. Jens Schwamborn is currently researching SARS-CoV2, the corona virus, with his mini brains. What is outstanding about this research model is that it helps to reduce the amount of animal testing.
– What are brain organoids?
– How can this research model be used?
– Why are animal experiments necessary at all?
– How can the mini brain model help reduce the amount of animal testing?
WHAT ARE BRAIN ORGANOIDS?
Brain organoids are small three-dimensional cell cultures that Jens Schwamborn and his team cultivate from human stem cells. Her research focuses primarily on Parkinson’s disease and the skin cells that are initially removed to generate stem cells come from patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Ultimately, the mini-brains bred in this way carry the genetic characteristics of Parkinson’s disease. However, one should not imagine the brain organoids as fully developed human brains, explains Jens Schwamborn. They are minimal components of the brain relevant to research.
HOW CAN THIS RESEARCH MODEL BE USED?
The brain organoids provide the perfect environment for researching neurological diseases and testing drugs. Research can be carried out directly on the disease and the areas affected by it, and active ingredients can be introduced and tested in a targeted manner without human subjects having to take a drug to test it. For Jens Schwamborn, this shows that this model represents a research method of the future – last but not least, in this way other diseases can be researched in addition to Parkinson’s and active substances can be tested by using the skin cells of people suffering from other diseases for cultivation instead of the skin cells of Parkinson’s patients used by stem cells. This is currently already happening with skin cells from healthy people, which Jens Schwamborn is infecting with SARS-CoV2 after their further development into brain organoids in cooperation with other institutes in order to gain new insights into the corona virus and to find active substances against it.
WHY IS ANIMAL TESTING EVEN NECESSARY?
Jens Schwamborn and his scientific colleagues are repeatedly faced with a dilemma in their work: The human brain is an extremely complex structure, and understanding and being able to understand neurological disorders in it is a challenge simply because, for ethical reasons, hardly any of these can be researched directly. Therefore, animal testing is avoided. However, these do not provide an optimal research environment because animal brains do not have all the key features that make up a human brain. The situation in them is therefore different from that in the human brain and a laboratory model is required that can more accurately depict the situation in the human brain, says Jens Schwamborn.
HOW CAN THE MINI BRAIN MODEL HELP REDUCE ANIMAL TESTING?
The brain organoids grown in vitro are three-dimensional structures that resemble the human brain in some aspects. In their behavior, too, they represent an image of those cells in the actual human brain and can even send out and process signals, reports Jens Schwamborn.
Tests and experiments in animal models can produce different results than if they had taken place on a human brain. Active ingredients and medicines that have been found can often turn out to be unsuitable for humans if they are based on animal experiments. The probability that the active ingredients obtained through research on the mini-brains will also have an effect in the human organism is possibly greater.
OrganoTherapeutics use cutting-edge human-specific mini-brains for the discovery and development of effective drug candidates targeting Parkinson’s disease. We screen new molecules on our proprietary human-specific minibrains which represent a model mimicking faithfully the human Parkinson’s disease pathology. OrganoTherapeutics aims at developing new drug candidates against Parkinson’s disease which are tested in state-of-the art 3D patient models. OrganoTherapeutics has developed first own proprietary drug candidates and has access to attractive libraries for further screening.
company contact
OrganoTherapeutics
Jens Schwamborn
Avenue des Hauts Fourneaux 6A
4365 Esch sur Alzette
+4917680774615
[email protected]
http://organo-therapeutics.com/
press contact
OrganoTherapeutics
Jens Schwamborn
Avenue des Hauts Fourneaux 6A
4365 Esch sur Alzette
+4917680774615
[email protected]
http://organo-therapeutics.com/
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