{"id":225438,"date":"2025-11-19T13:13:44","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T19:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/breakthrough-helps-scientists-grow-more-realistic-human-brain-models"},"modified":"2025-11-19T13:13:44","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T19:13:44","slug":"breakthrough-helps-scientists-grow-more-realistic-human-brain-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/breakthrough-helps-scientists-grow-more-realistic-human-brain-models","title":{"rendered":"Breakthrough Helps Scientists Grow More Realistic Human Brain Models"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/breakthrough-helps-scientists-grow-more-realistic-human-brain-models.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Slicing up and analyzing real, living, three-dimensional <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/a-tiny-piece-of-mouse-brain-has-finally-been-mapped-in-mindblowing-detail\">brain tissue<\/a> comes with some obvious complications \u2013 as in, it tends to be needed by its owner. But scientists are now closer than ever to being able to grow realistic brain tissue models in the lab to experiment on instead.<\/p>\n<p>A team of researchers led by the University of California, Riverside (UCR) have created a tiny scaffolding some 2 millimeters (0.08 inches) wide, on which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/ever-wanted-a-brain-transplant-here-are-the-challenges-we-face\">donated neural stem cells<\/a> can be attached and develop into full neurons.<\/p>\n<p>The scaffolding is called BIPORES \u2013 or the Bijel-Integrated PORous Engineered System \u2013 and it\u2019s made mostly of the common polymer <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Polyethylene_glycol\">polyethylene glycol<\/a> (PEG). The researchers modified the PEG to make it \u2018sticky\u2019 for brain cells, without needing the usual coatings that can interfere with the reliability of the science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Slicing up and analyzing real, living, three-dimensional brain tissue comes with some obvious complications \u2013 as in, it tends to be needed by its owner. But scientists are now closer than ever to being able to grow realistic brain tissue models in the lab to experiment on instead. A team of researchers led by the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}