Impact of 4-DBR for patients
The 4-DBR project offers a complete different and innovative approach to treat patients with neurodegenerative disorders. Even though advanced therapies have long been presented as a solution to complex diseases such as Parkinson’s or Huntington diseases, there are many complexities associated when injecting brain cells into human brains. These include the migration of these cells to other parts of the body or cell death or lack of maturation once it is transplanted, amongst others.
The 4-DBR consortium will join forces to overcome these hurdles through highly advanced tissue engineering techniques. We will develop a 4D-minibrain that will integrate to the specifically allocated area of the brain and these cells will only mature once it has been transplanted. Moreover, the high quality of our scaffold, will ensure the stability of the cells and its patient-based or organic origin of the material used, will minimize tissue rejection.
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In addition, the resulting 4D-minibrain can be useful in research, especially in drug development. Using functioning human tissue to help screen medication candidates could speed up development and provide key tools for facilitating personalized medicine, while saving money and reducing the number of animals used for research. This is particularly important in neurodegenerative diseases, where existing animal models have proven to be inadequate in predicting human response due to major differences in brain functionality and composition.