Inside the real-life Frankenstein’s lab, a controversial start-up is conducting experiments that blur the boundaries between life and death.
Within whirring tanks of pumping fluids, human brains from the recently deceased are kept alive by teams of scientists.
These brains are kept teetering on the edge of death for a few precious hours as their electrical activity is muted with anaesthetics.
However, while this sounds like the work of a mad scientist, it could be the key to curing diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
The Connecticut-based start-up Bexorg is developing this technology to test experimental drugs on living, functioning human brains.
Their brains are gathered from patients with neurodegenerative diseases by organisations that procure donated organs for transplantation.
In the five years they have been operating, Bexorg has already performed tests on more than 700 human brains.
However, this has sparked concerns over whether the reanimated brains may be able to regain consciousness.
Scientists at a controversial American startup are keeping disembodied brains alive to test experimental medication
Bexorg keeps brains alive using a machine it calls BrainEx, which can keep the organ in a temporary state of limbo after death.
BrainEx works by pumping a special synthetic blood through the brain’s own network of vessels, carrying oxygen and nutrients deep into the tissues.
At the same time, the machine’s operating system ensures that the organ is kept at the right temperature and in the correct conditions to stay alive.
Once scientists have hooked the donated organ into BrainEx, they immediately begin administering experimental drugs.
Scientists carefully watch how the brain reacts in real time, gathering data on its cells, proteins, and physical reactions.
After 24 hours of metabolising various drugs, Bexorg pulls the plug, ending the brain’s brief afterlife, before slicing it into hundreds of pieces for further study.
This allows the researchers to gather critical data, learning how long the drug stays in cells, whether they reach their target, and whether there are any potential side effects.
Although it sounds morbid, the scientists behind Bexorg say that this is a better and more ethical way to test new medicines.
Researchers at Bexorg have developed a method for keeping brains functional for a day, in order to trial new medicines for diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s
When researchers develop a new drug, it is often tested on ‘animal models’, which include mice, pigs, or monkeys.
This kind of animal testing has been widely criticised for its alleged cruelty, but there is also no guarantee of its accuracy.
Just because a molecule behaves a certain way in a mouse’s brain, this doesn’t necessarily mean it will react the same way in a human.
Currently, the US government is trying to push researchers away from animal models towards an emerging generation of human-based systems.
These often include simulated organs created with lab-grown tissues or tiny structures of cells that mimic organs known as organoids.
However, none of these options truly match the complexity of a human brain that has spent decades reacting to different medicines, drugs, and environmental factors.
Zvonimir Vrselja, Bexorg’s founder, told Science: ‘You get cells that have been there for 60 to 80 years.’
This means that real human brains may react to treatments very differently from a petri dish full of cells.
The alternative to Bexorg’s disembodied brains are collections of neural cells called brain organoids (pictured). However, living brains are a far more realistic way of testing medication for human use
Since testing a new experimental medication on an actual living person is unacceptable, Bexorg’s partially living brains offer an enticing solution.
The researchers say that using their brains can save millions and shave years off the timeline of drug development.
Already, the pharmaceutical company Biohaven is preparing to launch a clinical trial of a drug developed using data gathered from Bexorg’s brains.
This drug is designed to help boost the faltering energy supplies of brains suffering from neurodegenerative conditions.
Likewise, a Parkinson’s treatment being developed by Biohaven didn’t work at all in mice, but did work in disembodied brains at a dose 20 times lower than initially expected.
The idea of keeping brains alive in vats has sparked some concerns that the organs could regain consciousness and begin to feel pain or distress.
In 2019, the company’s researchers published a paper showing that their machine could restore function to the brains of pigs obtained from a local slaughterhouse.
Speaking to Live Science at the time, bioethicist Stephen Latham, of Yale University, warned: ‘This is brand new, and there’s no kind of institutional oversight.’
‘If consciousness were somehow induced in the brain, we don’t have ethics committees … that are constituted to even think about how to do the kinds of trade-offs you do when you do research on human subjects or on animals.’
However, Bexorg insists that these brains did not regain anything resembling consciousness at any point.
Brendan Parent, a bioethicist at New York University Langone Health and one of six ethicists on Bexorg’s advisory board, says that the brains are devoid of the coordinated neural activity required for even minimal levels of consciousness.
To be safer, the artificial blood contains an anaesthetic called propofol, which forestalls electrical activity in the brain.
This ensures that the brain is only functional in the most basic sense, and doesn’t have the activity to produce anything resembling thoughts, memories, or experiences.
HOW SOON WILL WE BE ABLE TO UPLOAD OUR MINDS TO A COMPUTER?
Brain and memory preservation has been explored at length by futurists, scientists and science fiction junkies alike.
Many say it falls under the category of ‘transhumanism.’
Transhumanism is the belief that the human body can evolve beyond its current form with the help of scientists and technology.
The practice of mind uploading has been promoted by many people, including Ray Kurzweil, Google’s director of engineering, who believes we will be able to upload our entire brains to computers by 2045.
Similar technologies have been depicted in science fiction dramas, ranging from Netflix’s Altered Carbon, to the popular series Black Mirror.
Another prominent futurist, Dr Michio Kaku, believes virtual reality can be used to keep our loved ones’ personalities and memories alive even after they die.
Scientists and futurists have different theories about how we might be able to preserve the human brain, ranging from uploading our memories to a computer to Nectome’s high-tech embalming process, which can keep it intact for thousands of years
‘Imagine being able to speak to your loved one after they die … it is possible if their personality has been downloaded onto a computer as an avatar,’ he explained.
These ideas haven’t been met without criticism.
McGill University Neuroscientist Michael Hendricks told MIT that these technologies are a ‘joke.’
‘I hope future people are appalled that in the 21st century, the richest and most comfortable people in history spent their money and resources trying to live forever on the backs of their descendants. I mean, it’s a joke, right? They are cartoon bad guys,’ he said.
Meanwhile, neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis said recently that such technologies would be virtually impossible.
‘The brain is not computable and no engineering can reproduce it,’ he said.
‘You can have all the computer chips in the world and you won’t create a consciousness.’
