New Method Preserves Human Brain Tissue Longer for Research

Study in a Sentence: Researchers recently developed a new method to prolong the preservation of brain tissue donated for research from 12 hours to 48 hours. They applied the method to create a human-based experimental model to study the electrical activity of brain cells from epilepsy patients.

Healthy for Humans: This method can be adapted to create other in vitro models of human brain diseases, which can be used to characterize the molecular underpinnings of brain disorders like epilepsy and test new treatment strategies without conducting research on patients directly.

Redefining Research: The time extension allows researchers to conduct more studies and acquire more data using human brain tissues, avoiding animal experiments. Some of these studies, such as gene therapy, were not possible before with the limited 12-hour viability of the human brain tissues.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22554-9.pdf