Alzheimer's breakthrough as scientists use living human brain tissue as they hunt for cure

Scientists have made a significant breakthrough in their hunt for a cure for Alzheimer's disease by using living human brain tissue to mimic the early stages of the condition. For the first time in the world, the team of British scientists successfully exposed healthy brain tissue from living NHS patients to a toxic form of a protein linked to Alzheimer’s, taken from patients who died from the disease, to demonstrate how the conditions affect the brain cells in real time.

The findings allowed the team to watch the development of the disease in its early stages, providing them with a chance to study the condition in a new way. Dr Claire Durrant, a Race Against Dementia fellow and UK Dementia Research Institute emerging leader at the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, believes that the findings could be an important milestone in attempts to combat the disease. She said: “We believe this tool could help accelerate findings from the lab into patients, bringing us one step closer to a world free from the heartbreak of dementia.

“Working alongside the neurosurgical team at the University of Edinburgh, we have shown that living human brain slices can be used to explore fundamental questions relating to Alzheimer’s disease.”

The study saw the team provided with healthy brain tissue from cancer patients that would otherwise have been disposed of.

The fragments of brain were kept alive in dishes for a fortnight as the team simulated the onset of Alzheimer's by adding amyloid beta from people who died from the disease to monitor how it develops.

Dementia represents a significant challenge to global medical chains with the number of those suffering from the condition on the rise. By 2050, the amount of people affected is estimated to triple to 153 million globally.

The research was backed by Race Against Dementia, a charity formed by Sir Jackie Stewart after his wife’s dementia diagnosis, and a £1m donation from the James Dyson Foundation, a charity supporting medical research and engineering education.

Dyson believes that the discovery showcases progress in the fight to solve “one of the most devastating problems of our time”.

He said: “Working with brain surgeons and their consenting patients to collect samples of living human brain and keep them alive in the lab is a groundbreaking method.

“It allows researchers to better examine Alzheimer’s disease on real human brain cells rather than relying on animal substitutes, such as mice.”