Thought Shrapnel

I can see this going the same way as the abortion debate. I know what I, personally, think about this (once I’m dead, I’m dead, and no amount of electrical stimulation is going to reanimate my consciousness) but I think there will be significant pushback from people who have perhaps read a little too much Mary Shelley.

Just a day ago, the brain was in a living person. Now, hours after its owner died, it sits on a cart draped in tubes that quiver as they pump liters of blood substitute and other fluids through the organ, supplying oxygen and removing waste. With most of its key functions intact but its electrical activity quenched by anesthesia, the brain hovers between life and death. As it metabolizes experimental drugs, sensors record its reactions, capturing hundreds of data points on its cells, proteins, and physiology. Then, after 24 hours in this state, it will be sliced into hundreds of pieces for more detailed study.

The brain is one of more than 700 that the 5-year-old biotech startup Bexorg has nurtured and studied using a set of proprietary brain-sustaining machines it calls BrainEx. The platform grants researchers an intimate look into how potential therapies might work inside brains with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Bexorg can biopsy the brains and discover how long a drug stays in cells, whether it hits its molecular target, and any hints of side effects.

The system promises far more realistic conditions for testing drugs than lab animals or cells in a dish, its developers say. Whole brains come with decades of environmental exposures, histories of drug treatments, and unique genetics that can affect responses to experimental medicines, says physician Zvonimir Vrselja, one of Bexorg’s founders and CEO. “You get cells that have been there for 60 to 80 years.”

[…]

The brains are already almost devoid of the coordinated neural firing necessary even for minimal consciousness, says Brendan Parent, a bioethicist at New York University Langone Health and one of six ethicists on Bexorg’s advisory board. But the company also forestalls any electrical activity with the anesthetic propofol, among other measures. Bexorg obtains brains in partnership with organizations that procure donated organs for transplantation, and Vrselja says once families understand the company’s process and goals, their response is overwhelmingly positive.

[…]

The company is also developing a machine learning model called NeuroLens that acts as a “virtual brain,” trained on the brain readouts, donors’ medical records, and protein and microscopy data from brain tissue. The model could eventually allow researchers to test new drug molecules before even going into a physical brain. In this virtual form, the pampered brains in Bexorg’s lab will live on even after their life support is withdrawn.

Source: Science

Image: Milad Fakurian