AI Article Synopsis

  • Human cerebral organoids mimic the 3D structure of the human brain and have potential to improve drug development for neurological diseases like epilepsy.
  • Many epilepsy patients don't respond to existing medications, highlighting the need for better models for effective drug testing.
  • This study uses organoids to investigate how oxygen-glucose deprivation affects brain hyperexcitability and responses to antiseizure drugs, revealing key genetic and protein changes relevant to GABAergic signaling and drug discovery.

Article Abstract

Human cerebral organoids resemble the 3D complexity of the human brain and have the potential to augment current drug development pipelines for neurological disease. Epilepsy is a complex neurological condition characterized by recurrent seizures. A third of people with epilepsy do not respond to currently available pharmaceutical drugs, and there is not one drug that treats all subtypes; thus, better models of epilepsy are needed for drug development. Cerebral organoids may be used to address this unmet need. In the present work, human cerebral organoids are used along with electrophysiological methods to explore oxygen-glucose deprivation as a hyperexcitability agent. This activity is investigated in its response to current antiseizure drugs. Furthermore, the mechanism of action of the drug candidates is probed with qPCR and immunofluorescence. The findings demonstrate OGD-induced hyperexcitable changes in the cerebral organoid tissue, which is treated with cannabidiol and bumetanide. There is evidence for NKCC1 and KCC2 gene expression, as well as other genes and proteins involved in the complex development of GABAergic signaling. This study supports the use of organoids as a platform for modelling cerebral cortical hyperexcitability that could be extended to modelling epilepsy and used for drug discovery.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10416870PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cells12151949DOI Listing

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