This time, Associate Professor Yoshiho Ikeuchi of the Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo and his colleagues used human iPS cells to create an artificial cerebral tissue that mimics the structure of two distant cerebral regions connected by axon bundles. I succeeded in making it.

　The research group first differentiated human iPS cells into cranial nerves and cultured them by placing one on each side of a microdevice consisting of two round chambers and a narrow channel connecting them.Around the 2th day after placement on the device, a large number of axons extended into the channel from each. Around the 1th day, the axons in the channel became bundled tissue, and it was possible to create a tissue in which two artificial cerebral tissues were connected.

　When one cerebral tissue was electrically stimulated, a signal was also detected in the other cerebral tissue, confirming that information was exchanged between the two cerebral tissues.From this, it was found that the tissue produced this time mimics the way information is transmitted between distant regions of the cerebrum.

　Next, when the function of L1CAM, which is the causative gene that causes axon bundle disease, was deleted and analyzed, it was found that the efficiency of axon bundle formation was greatly reduced.From this, it was found that the tissue produced this time has an axon bundle formed by the same mechanism as the brain tissue in the living body, and is also useful as a model of disease.

　The artificial cerebral tissue of the results of this research is expected to be utilized in research aimed at overcoming neural circuits in the cerebrum and related diseases as a model experimental system that simplifies phenomena in the living body.

Paper information:[IScience] A human iPS cell-derived tissue model of a cerebral tract connecting two cortical regions