New Organ-on-Chip for Studying Brain Development with Blood Vessels

Study in a Sentence: Researchers recently used stem cells derived from human skin to recreate the development of brain cells together with blood vessel cells on a chip, leading to the discovery that blood vessels cells play a vital role in the development and function of human brain cells. 

Healthy for Humans: The new model could be used to study diseases of the brain, such as spinal cord damage, and advance personalized drug testing for neurological disorders. 

Redefining Research: By incorporating blood vessels, this organ-on-chip model can show the molecular signaling events and gene expression patterns of human brain development better than previous models-in-a-dish and is closer to recreating what happens inside the human body.