In this year’s opening session of the International Symposium on ALS/MND, we’ve just heard the Stephen Hawking Memorial Lecture. The lecture brings expertise from outside the field of MND to spark new ideas and out of the box thinking.
The Lecture was given by Professor Alysson Muotri who specialises in how our brains develop and change over time, and in creating models of neurological diseases that can be used in laboratories to study the biology of these diseases. These models use stem cells to create different types of brain cells or brain organoids, which are miniature 3D versions of the brain. Professor Muotri shared how his team have developed 3D brain models which grow in the lab in ways that resemble how a real brain develops in the womb. The data presented showed that these brain organoids have patterns of electrical activity similar to that seen in the brains of babies and that, over time, these brains mature even though they aren’t connected to a body or exposed to ‘real-life’ environments. This suggests some parts of brain development are controlled by our DNA, and don’t need input from the outside world.
Although these brain organoids have been shown to develop and mature in similar ways to in humans, they don’t naturally age in the same way. So it’s harder to use these organoids to accurately study neurological diseases which typically begin later in life. Professor Muotri presented his solution to this challenge: ‘Space-Induced Neural Senescence’. Sending the organoids to space and exposing them to space conditions (such as microgravity and radiation) can speed up the ageing process – just 30 days in space can speed up the ageing of brain organoids by 10 years!
Using this technique might help to age the organoids so they more accurately represent naturally ageing brains. This could be used to study aged-related diseases, like MND, in brain models that more accurately represent what happens in the brains of people with the disease. Bringing this technology to MND research could help to uncover more about what happens in the brain before and during the disease and reveal new targets for potential treatments.
