Today, Alzheimer’s disease is the UK’s biggest killer. It is a terrible illness which robs people of their memories, stories, and relationships. Current treatment options for patients with Alzheimer’s disease include a mix of medicines and therapy. However, these treatments only help to alleviate the symptoms of the disease and not cure it. Yet, we should not lose hope! Alzheimer’s disease research output has sky-rocketed in the past few years, with more people than ever working towards finding a cure. Now, one highly fascinating area of Alzheimer’s disease research is emerging: brain organoids.

Organoids are small, three-dimensional versions of organs or tissues formed from cells often used in research to better our understanding of diseases. Methods for culturing different types of organoids have been in constant development since 1987. Nevertheless, brain organoid culturing has been around for less than a decade. Most current brain organoids are formed from the neuroectoderm (the outer layer of an embryo that evolves into the central nervous system and other nervous tissues), failing to take into account the other non-neuronal cells that the brain is made up of. This means that these organoids are not able to model brain diseases or functions accurately. Recently, scientists from the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California (USA), published a cutting-edge paper in Nature Biotechnology highlighting their novel organoid model of a human brain.

They were able to create a brain organoid model containing important brain cells involved in neuronal activity and health that have never been 3D- modelled before. The model was developed by administering drug molecules to the organoid and then observing whether formation of the important brain cells was promoted. The results from this research are exciting as the model will allow scientists to now study how inflammation and stress are involved in brain diseases including Alzheimer’s with better transparency. In addition to this, druggable targets can also be studied with greater accuracy using this model, giving hope for Alzheimer’s disease therapy research.

So, watch this space as brain organoid models of Alzheimer’s disease continue to develop, hopefully leading to new Alzheimer’s disease therapeutics.