- The country most affected by opioid addiction is the United States and every day 115 people die from excessive consumption of this type of drug.
- Companies like Walmart have been accused of promoting this serious global health problem.
- According to the WHO, millions of people resort to treatments such as buprenorphine to combat intense pain.
Technology advances by leaps and bounds every day and where it is best appreciated is in the medical field. One of the latest projects by Mayo Clinic scientists is the creation of 3D mini brains manufactured in a laboratory from human cells. The project arose for various reasons, but one of the main ones is to study and combat opioid addiction.
The biggest drawback of drugs
In this sense, the team has discovered changes in specific brain neurons of people diagnosed with drug use disorder. The new study, published in Molecular Psychiatryhelps to clarify a possible therapeutic objective and adds to the knowledge of the pathway of opioid addiction.
“The human brain is incredibly complex, and how opioids affect the addicted brain remains unclear, despite the increasing number of opioid overdose deaths,” says lead author Dr. Ming-Fen Ho, stem cell biologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.
This new technology of mini brains will enable the study of complex brain disorders in humans like never before in history. Based on the results, it is proposed to offer new alternatives that will be replicated in humans.
Opioid overdoses have become a growing problem across the globe, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Millions of people have become addicted to these drugs and turn to treatments such as buprenorphine to reduce cravings and sedatives.withdrawal symptoms.
“Given the widespread use of opioids and the global opioid epidemic, it is critical that we understand how opioids and drugs used to treat opioid use disorder change the function of brain neurons at the single-cell level.”
How do mini artificial brains work?
For the study, Dr. Ho and her team they created miniature 3D models similar to the brain, called organoids. The pea-sized clumps of 3D cells began as blood cells from patients diagnosed with opioid use disorder.
The blood cells were placed in a culture dish and “reprogrammed” into a stem cell-like state, called induced pluripotent stem cells. The characteristic that they have is that they can become any cell in the body, including brain neurons.
“Cells grow and assemble on their own to replicate parts of the brain, in this case, the prefrontal cortex. We chose the prefrontal cortex because previous preclinical and clinical studies have identified a key involvement of this brain region in addiction.”
Next, the team studied the effects of two drugs on organoids — oxycodone and buprenorphine — and performed a pathway analysis for each. Dr. Ho and her team discovered biological pathways related to opioid addiction at the single-cell level. The results indicate a link between opioid addiction and inflammation, which occurs when the brain’s immune system is overactive.
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