Bassil Katherine, Horstkötter Dorothee
Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Department of Health Ethics and Society, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Camb Q Healthc Ethics. 2023 Feb 17:1-13. doi: 10.1017/S0963180123000038.
The generation of three-dimensional cerebral organoids from human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hPSC) has facilitated the investigation of mechanisms underlying several neuropsychiatric disorders, including stress-related disorders, namely major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Generating hPSC-derived neurons, cerebral organoids, and even assembloids (or multi-organoid complexes) can facilitate research into biomarkers for stress susceptibility or resilience and may even bring about advances in personalized medicine and biomarker research for stress-related psychiatric disorders. Nevertheless, cerebral organoid research does not come without its own set of ethical considerations. With increased complexity and resemblance to in vivo conditions, discussions of increased moral status for these models are ongoing, including questions about sentience, consciousness, moral status, donor protection, and chimeras. There are, however, unique ethical considerations that arise and are worth looking into in the context of research into stress and stress-related disorders using cerebral organoids. This paper provides stress research-specific ethical considerations in the context of cerebral organoid generation and use for research purposes. The use of stress research as a case study here can help inform other practices of in vitro studies using brain models with high ethical considerations.
从人诱导多能干细胞（hPSC）生成三维脑类器官，有助于研究包括应激相关障碍（即重度抑郁症和创伤后应激障碍）在内的几种神经精神疾病的潜在机制。生成hPSC来源的神经元、脑类器官，甚至组装体（或多器官oid复合体），可以促进对应激易感性或恢复力生物标志物的研究，甚至可能在应激相关精神疾病的个性化医学和生物标志物研究方面取得进展。然而，脑类器官研究也有其自身的一系列伦理考量。随着这些模型与体内条件的复杂性和相似性增加，关于这些模型道德地位提高的讨论正在进行，包括关于感知、意识、道德地位、供体保护和嵌合体的问题。然而，在使用脑类器官进行应激和应激相关障碍研究的背景下，会出现一些独特的伦理考量，值得深入研究。本文在脑类器官生成及用于研究目的的背景下，提供了应激研究特有的伦理考量。将应激研究作为案例研究，有助于为其他具有高度伦理考量的脑模型体外研究实践提供参考。
