Important Takeaways:

• For the first time, scientists have grown cerebral organoids — three-dimensional, lab-grown “minibrains” — from human fetal brain tissue.
• The new organoids grew to the size of a grain of rice and contained many types of cells that self-organized into complex 3D structures. The researchers also triggered the growth of brain tumors within the minibrains and tested the tumors’ response to existing cancer drugs.
• To make the new minibrains, the researchers took samples of brain tissue from deceased fetuses around the gestational age of 12 to 15 weeks old, which had been provided by anonymous donors. They separately grew small samples of each of the tissues on small plates using specific nutrients and growth factors. Each sample was continuously shaken as it grew, to ensure that all the cells within them were exposed to these chemicals, and they were not provided any physical scaffolding to grow upon.
• Around four to eight days later, the researchers noticed the formation of “multiple organized 3D structures” that later matured into organoids with a “tissue-like appearance.”

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