Engineering Personalized Cortical Implants for Brain Regeneration

Organ transplantation remains the only cure available today for patients with severely damaged or diseased organs. This approach has many limitations such as the lack of organ donors, risk of immune rejection, and high cost. These limitations stress the need to find a way to replace the damaged tissue with an affordable, readily available substitute that will not trigger a violent immune response.

In this research, it was hypothesized that by differentiating patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) inside a proper extra-cellular matrix, functional personalized human cortical tissues could be engineered. Since these engineered tissues match the immunological and cellular properties of the patient, they are not expected to be rejected after transplantation.

Implants were generated by integrating iPSCs in omentum hydrogel. Following, the embryonic development of cortical neuronal tissue was mimicked. The engineered tissue implants expressed neuronal markers and extended neurites. Furthermore, the implants were chemically stimulated by glutamate and KCl which triggered calcium release among the cells, indicating engineering of a well-functional tissue. We envision that such personalized cortical implants may be useful for regenerating the injured brain after trauma or stroke.