Finding a treatment for Alzheimer’s remains elusive as the disease is very complex. The latest effort is the donation by a 28-year-old man of part of his brain with cancer for study by scientists.
Using a living brain tissue from Aidan Mcallister to observe Alzheimer’s proteins in real time could speed up the discovery of a treatment, CNN reports.
Researchers can create 3D models to visually understand how Alzheimer’s destroys cells, which cannot be seen from imaging alone, according to CNN.
Mcallister wanted to help find a treatment because his grandfather died of Alzheimer’s.
Brain cells not only help researchers find a cure for the disease that causes memory loss leading to death.
In Australia, biotech group Cortical Labs (CL) went viral last week when it revealed the purpose of neurons grown from stem cells that were harvested from the blood of adult donors.
The CL researchers grew 200,000 living human brain cells on a microchip and taught it how to play a doomsday video game, New York Post (NYP) reports.
“Real neurons are grown directly on our custom chips, creating an intelligence that learns intuitively, with remarkable efficiency,” the company said on its site, according to NYP. “Unlike traditional AI, our neural systems require minimal energy and training data to master complex tasks.”
Other than for playing video games, CL built 120 computers running on neuron chips to serve as a data center in Melbourne, Australia, the company announced on 10 March via Bloomberg News.