Can brain organoids help in treating people with Alzheimer’s disease? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Brain organoids are lab grown clusters of cells that have several of the cell types found in someone’s brain. Cells taken from a person’s blood are coaxed to become stem cells, then differentiate into brain cells. Vasiliki Machairaki, a genetic medicine expert at Johns Hopkins and one author of a new study demonstrating the utility of these organoids, says there’s a clear goal in mind.

Machairaki: Why we are doing this because we are talking about precision medicine in Alzheimer disease. We know now that Alzheimer disease is not this single disease entity. They develop different signals in different time points, they respond different to different drugs. So the whole idea with the precision medicine in Alzheimer disease I should be able to define biological subtypes the subgroup of patients that can respond to a specific drug.   :27

The current study looks at responses to a drug called escitalopram among these organoids from people with Alzheimer disease, or AD, and those who are not affected, and demonstrates clear differences in response both within the group with AD and those without. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.