‘BrainSpan’ 3D technology could help drug development
pharmafile | April 4, 2014 | News story | Medical Communications, Sales and Marketing | NIH, brainscan, digital, nimh
A new three-dimensional atlas of the developing human brain has been made available in the hope that it can help researchers develop new medicines for diseases.
Called the ‘BrainSpan Atlas of the Developing Human Brain’, this new online portal incorporates both gene activity and expression along with anatomical reference atlases and neuroimaging data of the human brain.
Knowledge of where and when particular genes are expressed will help research surrounding human brain development and disease.
This National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded resource, freely available to the public, enables researchers to answer questions related to the early roots of brain-based disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.
“Many neuropsychiatric diseases are likely the result of abnormal brain development during prenatal life,” says lead author Ed Lein of the Allen Institute.
“An anatomically precise molecular atlas of the brain during this time period is a first step to understanding how the human brain develops normally and what can go wrong.”
Lein and other researchers studied four donated, intact, high-quality human prenatal brains from preterm stillbirths – two from 15-16 weeks and two from 21 weeks post-conception – as a framework for their atlas.
Contributing laboratories also provided data from a variety of genomic and imaging techniques. The Atlas’s ultimate aim is to inspire new hypotheses regarding human brain development.
“The BrainSpan Atlas becomes very powerful when one can understand where and when a particular gene is used”, says Lein. Knowledge of the time and location of these types of genes may lead to future treatment targets and early interventions for this brain disorder, he adds.
“Although the many genes associated with autism and schizophrenia don’t show a clear relationship to each other in the adult brain, the BrainSpan Atlas reveals how these diverse genes are connected in the developing brain,” said NIMH director Thomas Insel.
“Findings of what goes on early in the prenatal brain can lead to the development of biomarkers for diagnosing brain disorders and for matching patients to treatment options most likely to be successful.”
He concludes: “This Atlas is a clear example of the progress that can be made when the public and private sectors work together […] we are encouraged to see the impact the BrainSpan Atlas is already making on brain research.”
The resource is now available online here for viewing, searching, and data mining for gene activity patterns.
Ben Adams
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