What is an assembloid? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Brain organoids, cell collections grown in a lab to study diseases like Alzheimer’s, have created excitement because they are a bit more representative of a real brain. Johns Hopkins cell engineering expert Vasiliki Machairaki says there is another technique underway that is even more representative.

Machairaki: We are trying to do is to make a system that is closer, the closer that we can in the human brain so the less artificial the better. There are certain questions that you can answer with the 2D other questions with the 3D. Now we are going to a level higher. We are talking about assembloids.   Assembloids is you can make now different types of organoids that they represent different regions of the brain.    :30

Machairaki notes that such a system would enable assessments of how different drugs work in various brain regions for example. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.