Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia.
School of Chemistry and Molecular Bioscience, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia.
Neuroscientist. 2020 Oct-Dec;26(5-6):438-454. doi: 10.1177/1073858420912404. Epub 2020 Apr 13.
Because our beliefs regarding our individuality, autonomy, and personhood are intimately bound up with our brains, there is a public fascination with cerebral organoids, the "mini-brain," the "brain in a dish". At the same time, the ethical issues around organoids are only now being explored. What are the prospects of using human cerebral organoids to better understand, treat, or prevent dementia? Will human organoids represent an improvement on the current, less-than-satisfactory, animal models? When considering these questions, two major issues arise. One is the general challenge associated with using stem cell-generated preparation for in vitro modelling (challenges amplified when using organoids compared with simpler cell culture systems). The other relates to complexities associated with defining and understanding what we mean by the term "dementia." We discuss 10 puzzles, issues, and stumbling blocks to watch for in the quest to model "dementia in a dish."
因为我们对个体性、自主性和人格的信仰与大脑紧密相连，所以公众对类脑器官、“迷你大脑”、“器官芯片中的大脑”有着强烈的兴趣。与此同时，类脑器官的伦理问题才刚刚开始被探索。利用人类大脑类器官来更好地理解、治疗或预防痴呆症的前景如何？人类类器官是否代表着对目前不太令人满意的动物模型的改进？在考虑这些问题时，出现了两个主要问题。一个是与使用干细胞生成的体外模型制备相关的一般挑战（与使用类器官相比，在使用更简单的细胞培养系统时，这些挑战更为突出）。另一个与定义和理解我们所说的“痴呆症”一词的复杂性有关。我们讨论了在模拟“器官芯片中的痴呆症”的过程中需要注意的 10 个难题、问题和绊脚石。
