Mega Brain Organoids

Organoids are miniature lab-grown blobs of tissue containing some of the cell types and performing some of the functions of the organ they represent. But the one pictured is no ordinary organoid. It’s a human miBrain or multicellular integrated brain  – a mega organoid incorporating all the major brain cell types: neurons, astrocytes, other glial cells, myelin-producing cells, and blood vessel cells. This cutting-edge technology provides an exceptionally detailed platform for studying brain functions and disease processes. Indeed, in one recent study, miBrains containing reprogrammed cells from a Parkinson’s disease patient, were used to show that perturbed lipid metabolism in astrocytes leads to disruption of the cells’ waste-disposal system, which in turn causes aggregation of α-synuclein (also known as Lewy bodies) and their harmful accumulation in neurons. Thus, while miBrains are still a new technology, their complex compositions are already proving invaluable for gaining comprehensive insights into brain disease mechanisms.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image from work by Louise A. Mesentier-Louro and Camille Goldman, and colleagues
• Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Cell Stem Cell, August 2026