back to indexPaola Arlotta: Brain Development from Stem Cell to Organoid | Lex Fridman Podcast #32
link |
The following is a conversation with Paola Arlada.
link |
She is a professor of stem cell and regenerative biology
link |
at Harvard University and is interested in understanding
link |
the molecular laws that govern the birth, differentiation,
link |
and assembly of the human brain's cerebral cortex.
link |
She explores the complexity of the brain
link |
by studying and engineering elements
link |
of how the brain develops.
link |
This was a fascinating conversation to me.
link |
It's part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast.
link |
If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube,
link |
give it five stars on iTunes.
link |
Support on Patreon or simply connect with me on Twitter
link |
at Lex Freedman, spelled F R I D M A N.
link |
And I'd like to give a special thank you to Amy Jeffers
link |
for her support of the podcast on Patreon.
link |
She's an artist and you should definitely check out
link |
her Instagram at LoveTruthGood, three beautiful words.
link |
Your support means a lot and inspires me
link |
to keep the series going.
link |
And now here's my conversation with Paola Arlada.
link |
You studied the development of the human brain
link |
So let me ask you an out of the box question first.
link |
How likely is it that there's intelligent life out there
link |
in the universe outside of earth
link |
with something like the human brain?
link |
So I can put it another way.
link |
How unlikely is the human brain?
link |
How difficult is it to build a thing
link |
through the evolutionary process?
link |
Well, it has happened here, right?
link |
So that simply tells you that it could, of course,
link |
happen again, other places is only a matter of probability.
link |
What the probability that you would get a brain
link |
like the ones that we have, like the human brain.
link |
So how difficult is it to make the human brain?
link |
It's pretty difficult.
link |
But most importantly, I guess we know very little
link |
about how this process really happens.
link |
And there is a reason for that,
link |
actually multiple reasons for that.
link |
Most of what we know about how the mammalian brains
link |
or the brain of mammals develop,
link |
comes from studying in labs other brains,
link |
not our own brain, the brain of mice, for example.
link |
But if I showed you a picture of a mouse brain
link |
and then you put it next to a picture of a human brain,
link |
they don't look at all like each other.
link |
So they're very different.
link |
And therefore, there is a limit to what you can learn
link |
about how the human brain is made by studying the mouse brain.
link |
There is a huge value in studying the mouse brain.
link |
There are many things that we have learned,
link |
but it's not the same thing.
link |
So in having studied the human brain
link |
or through the mouse and through other methodologies
link |
that we'll talk about, do you have a sense?
link |
I mean, you're one of the experts in the world.
link |
How much do you feel you know about the brain?
link |
And how often do you find yourself in awe
link |
of this mysterious thing?
link |
Yeah, you pretty much find yourself in awe all the time.
link |
It's an amazing process.
link |
It's a process by which,
link |
by means that we don't fully understand
link |
at the very beginning of embryogenesis,
link |
the structure called the neural tube literally self assembles.
link |
And it happens in an embryo
link |
and it can happen also from stem cells in a dish.
link |
And then from there, these stem cells that are present
link |
within the neural tube give rise to all of the thousands
link |
and thousands of different cell types
link |
that are present in the brain through time, right?
link |
With the interesting, very intriguing, interesting observation
link |
is that the time that it takes for the human brain to be made,
link |
it's human time, meaning that for me and you,
link |
it took almost nine months of gestation to build the brain
link |
and then another 20 years of learning postnatally
link |
to get the brain that we have today
link |
that allows us to this conversation.
link |
A mouse takes 20 days or so
link |
for an embryo to be born and so the brain is built
link |
in a much shorter period of time and the beauty of it
link |
is that if you take mouse stem cells
link |
and you put them in a cultured dish,
link |
the brain organoid that you get from a mouse is formed faster
link |
that if you took human stem cells and put them in the dish
link |
and let them make a human brain organoid.
link |
So the very developmental process is...
link |
Controlled by the speed of the species.
link |
Which means it's by its own purpose, it's not accidental
link |
or there is something in that temporal dynamic to that development.
link |
Exactly, that is very important for us to get the brain we have
link |
and we can speculate for why that is.
link |
It takes us a long time as human beings after we're born
link |
to learn all the things that we have to learn
link |
to have the adult brain.
link |
It's actually 20 years, think about it.
link |
From when a baby is born to when a teenager
link |
goes through puberty to adults, it's a long time.
link |
Do you think you can maybe talk through the first few months
link |
and then on to the first 20 years
link |
and then for the rest of their lives?
link |
What does the development of the human brain look like?
link |
What are the different stages?
link |
At the beginning you have to build a brain, right?
link |
And the brain is made of cells.
link |
What's the very beginning? Which beginning are we talking about?
link |
As the embryo is developing in the womb,
link |
in addition to making all of the other tissues of the embryo,
link |
the muscle, the heart, the blood,
link |
the embryo is also building the brain.
link |
And it builds from a very simple structure
link |
called the neural tube,
link |
which is basically nothing but a tube of cells
link |
that spans sort of the length of the embryo
link |
from the head all the way to the tail, let's say, of the embryo.
link |
And then over in human beings,
link |
over many months of gestation,
link |
from that neural tube,
link |
which contains a stem cell like cells of the brain,
link |
you will make many, many other building blocks of the brain.
link |
So all of the other cell types,
link |
because there are many, many different types of cells in the brain,
link |
that will form specific structures of the brain.
link |
So you can think about embryonic development of the brain
link |
as just the time in which you are making the building blocks, the cells.
link |
Are the stem cells relatively homogeneous,
link |
like uniform, or are they all different types?
link |
It's a very good question. It's exactly how it works.
link |
You start with a more homogeneous,
link |
perhaps more multipotent type of stem cell.
link |
That multipotent means that it has the potential
link |
to make many, many different types of other cells.
link |
And then with time, these progenitors become more heterogeneous,
link |
which means more diverse.
link |
There are going to be many different types of these stem cells.
link |
And also they will give rise to progeny,
link |
to other cells that are not stem cells,
link |
that are specific cells of the brain,
link |
that are very different from the mother stem cell.
link |
And now you think about this process of making cells from the stem cells
link |
over many, many months of development for humans.
link |
And what you're doing here, building the cells that physically make the brain,
link |
and then you arrange them in specific structures
link |
that are present in the final brain.
link |
So you can think about the embryonic development of the brain
link |
as the time where you're building the bricks.
link |
You're putting the bricks together to form buildings,
link |
structures, regions of the brain,
link |
and where you make the connections between these many different types of cells,
link |
especially nerve cells, neurons, right,
link |
that transmit action potentials and electricity.
link |
I've heard you also say somewhere, I think, correct me if I'm wrong,
link |
that the order of the way this builds matters.
link |
If you are an engineer and you think about development,
link |
you can think of it as, well, I could also take all the cells
link |
and bring them all together into a brain in the end.
link |
But development is much more than that.
link |
So the cells are made in a very specific order
link |
that subserve the final product that you need to get.
link |
And so, for example, all of the nerve cells, the neurons, are made first.
link |
And all of the supportive cells of the neurons, like the glia, is made later.
link |
And there is a reason for that because they have to assemble together in specific ways.
link |
But you also may say, well, why don't we just put them all together in the end?
link |
It's because as they develop next to each other,
link |
they influence their own development.
link |
So it's a different thing for a glia to be made alone in a dish
link |
than a glia cell be made in a developing embryo
link |
with all these other cells around it that produce all these other signals.
link |
First of all, that's mind blowing, that this development process.
link |
From my perspective in artificial intelligence,
link |
you often think of how incredible the final product is,
link |
the final product, the brain.
link |
But you just, you're making me realize that the final product is just,
link |
is the beautiful thing is the actual development process.
link |
Do we know the code that drives that development?
link |
Do we have any sense?
link |
First of all, thank you for saying that it's really the formation of the brain.
link |
It's really its development, this incredibly choreographed dance
link |
that happens the same way every time each one of us builds the brain, right?
link |
And that builds an organ that allows us to do what we're doing today, right?
link |
That is mind blowing.
link |
And this is why developmental neurobiologists never get tired of studying that.
link |
Now, you're asking about the code.
link |
What drives this? How is this done?
link |
Well, it's millions of years of evolution
link |
of really fine tuning gene expression programs
link |
that allow certain cells to be made at a certain time
link |
and to become a certain cell type,
link |
but also mechanical forces of pressure bending.
link |
This embryo is not just, it will not stay a tube,
link |
this brain for very long.
link |
At some point, this tube in the front of the embryo will expand
link |
to make the primordium of the brain, right?
link |
Now, the forces that control the cells feel,
link |
and this is another beautiful thing,
link |
the very force that they feel, which is different from a week before,
link |
a week ago, will tell the cell,
link |
oh, you're being squished in a certain way,
link |
begin to produce these new genes,
link |
because now you are at the corner,
link |
or you are in a stretch of cells or whatever it is.
link |
And so that mechanical physical force
link |
shapes the fate of the cell as well.
link |
So it's not only chemical, it's also mechanical.
link |
So from my perspective, biology is this incredibly complex mess,
link |
So you're seeing mechanical forces.
link |
How different is a computer or any kind of mechanical machine
link |
that humans build and the biological systems?
link |
Have you been, because you've worked a lot with biological systems,
link |
are they as much of a mess as it seems
link |
from a perspective of an engineer, a mechanical engineer?
link |
Yeah, they are much more prone to taking alternative routes, right?
link |
So if you, we go back to printing a brain versus developing a brain,
link |
of course, if you print a brain,
link |
given that you start with the same building blocks, the same cells,
link |
you could potentially print it the same way every time.
link |
But that final brain may not work the same way
link |
as a brain built during development does,
link |
because the very same building blocks that you're using
link |
developed in a completely different environment, right?
link |
That was not the environment of the brain.
link |
Therefore, they're going to be different just by definition.
link |
So if you instead use development to build, let's say, a brain
link |
organoid, which maybe we will be talking about in a few minutes.
link |
Those things are fascinating.
link |
Yes, so if you use processes of development,
link |
then when you watch it, you can see that sometimes things can go wrong
link |
in some organoids.
link |
And by wrong, I mean different one organoid from the next.
link |
While if you think about that embryo, it always goes right.
link |
So it's this development, it's for as complex as it is.
link |
Every time a baby is born has, you know, with very few exceptions,
link |
the brain is like the next baby.
link |
But it's not the same if you develop it in a dish.
link |
And first of all, we don't even develop a brain.
link |
You develop something much simpler in the dish.
link |
But there are more options for building things differently,
link |
which really tells you that evolution has played a really
link |
tight game here for how in the end the brain is built in vivo.
link |
So just a quick maybe dumb question,
link |
but it seems like the building process is not a dictatorship.
link |
It seems like there's not a centralized high level mechanism
link |
that says, OK, this cell built itself the wrong way.
link |
I'm going to kill it.
link |
It seems like there's a really strong distributed mechanism.
link |
Is that in your sense for what you have?
link |
There are a lot of possibilities, right?
link |
And if you think about, for example, different species,
link |
building their brain, each brain is a little bit different.
link |
So the brain of a lizard is very different from that
link |
of a chicken, from that of one of us, and so on and so forth.
link |
And still is a brain, but it was built differently.
link |
Starting from stem cells, they pretty much
link |
had the same potential.
link |
But in the end, evolution builds different brains
link |
in different species, because that
link |
serves in a way the purpose of that species
link |
and the well being of that organism.
link |
And so there are many possibilities,
link |
but then there is a way, and you were talking about a code.
link |
Nobody knows what the entire code of development is.
link |
Of course, we don't.
link |
We know bits and pieces of very specific aspects
link |
of development of the brain, what genes are involved
link |
to make a certain cell types, how those two cells interact
link |
to make the next level structure that we might know,
link |
but the entirety of it, how it's so well controlled.
link |
It's really mind blowing.
link |
So in the first two months in the embryo,
link |
or whatever, the first few weeks, few months.
link |
So yeah, the building blocks are constructed,
link |
the actual, the different regions of the brain,
link |
I guess, in the nervous system.
link |
Well, this continues way longer than just the first few months.
link |
So over the very first few months,
link |
you build a lot of these cells,
link |
but then there is continuous building of new cell types
link |
all the way through birth.
link |
And then even postnatally,
link |
I don't know if you've ever heard of myelin.
link |
Myelin is this sort of insulation
link |
that is built around the cables of the neurons
link |
so that the electricity can go really fast from.
link |
The axons, I guess they're called.
link |
The axons are called axons, exactly.
link |
And so as human beings, we myelinate ourselves
link |
postnatally, a kid, a six year old kid,
link |
as barely started the process of making
link |
the mature oligodendrocytes,
link |
which are the cells that then eventually
link |
will wrap the axons into myelin.
link |
And this will continue, believe it or not,
link |
until we are about 25, 30 years old.
link |
So there is a continuous process of maturation
link |
and tweaking and additions,
link |
and also in response to what we do.
link |
I remember taking api biology in high school,
link |
and in the textbook, it said that,
link |
I'm going by memory here,
link |
that scientists disagree on the purpose of myelin
link |
Is that totally wrong?
link |
So like, I guess it speeds up the,
link |
okay, but I'd be wrong here,
link |
but I guess it speeds up the electricity traveling
link |
down the axon or something.
link |
So that's the most sort of canonical,
link |
and definitely that's the case.
link |
So you have to imagine an axon,
link |
and you can think about it as a cable or some type
link |
with electricity going through.
link |
And what myelin does by insulating the outside,
link |
I should say there are tracts of myelin
link |
and pieces of axons that are naked without myelin.
link |
And so by having the insulation,
link |
the electricity instead of going straight through the cable,
link |
it will jump over a piece of myelin, right?
link |
To the next naked little piece and jump again,
link |
and therefore, that's the idea that you go faster.
link |
And it was always thought that in order to build
link |
a big brain, a big nervous system,
link |
in order to have a nervous system
link |
that can do very complex type of things,
link |
then you need a lot of myelin because you wanna go fast
link |
with this information from point A to point B.
link |
Well, a few years ago, maybe five years ago or so,
link |
we discovered that some of the most evolved,
link |
which means the newest type of neurons that we have
link |
as non human primates, as as human beings,
link |
in the top of our cerebral cortex,
link |
which should be the neurons that do some
link |
of the most complex things that we do.
link |
Well, those have axons that have very little myelin.
link |
Wow. And they have very interesting ways
link |
in which they put this myelin on their axons,
link |
you know, a little piece here, then a long track
link |
with no myelin, another chunk there,
link |
and some don't have myelin at all.
link |
So now you have to explain
link |
where we're going with evolution.
link |
And if you think about it, perhaps as an electrical engineer,
link |
when I looked at it, I initially thought,
link |
I'm a developmental neurobiology,
link |
I thought maybe this is what we see now,
link |
but if we give evolution another few million years,
link |
we'll see a lot of myelin on these neurons too.
link |
But I actually think now that that's instead
link |
the future of the brain, less myelin,
link |
and my allow for more flexibility
link |
on what you do with your axons,
link |
and therefore more complicated
link |
and unpredictable type of functions,
link |
which is also a bit mind blowing.
link |
So it seems like it's controlling the timing of the signal.
link |
So they're in the timing,
link |
you can encode a lot of information.
link |
And so the brain...
link |
The timing, the chemistry of that little piece of axon,
link |
perhaps it's a dynamic process where the myelin can move.
link |
Now you see how many layers of variability you can add,
link |
and that's actually really good.
link |
If you're trying to come up with a new function
link |
or a new capability or something unpredictable in a way.
link |
So we're gonna jump right out a little bit,
link |
but the old question of how much is nature
link |
and how much is nurture,
link |
in terms of this incredible thing
link |
after the development is over,
link |
we seem to be kind of somewhat smart, intelligent,
link |
cognition, consciousness,
link |
all these things are just incredible ability of reason
link |
In your sense, how much is in the hardware,
link |
in the nature and how much is in the nurtures
link |
learned through with our parents
link |
through interacting with the environment, so on.
link |
It's really both, right?
link |
If you think about it.
link |
So we are born with a brain as babies
link |
that has most of its cells and most of its structures
link |
and that will take a few years to grow,
link |
to add more, to be better.
link |
But really then we have this 20 years
link |
of interacting with the environment around us.
link |
And so what that brain that was so perfectly built
link |
or imperfectly built due to our genetic cues
link |
will then be used to incorporate the environment
link |
in its farther maturation and development.
link |
And so your experiences do shape your brain.
link |
I mean, we know that like if you and I
link |
may have had a different childhood or a different,
link |
we have been going to different schools,
link |
we have been learning different things
link |
and our brain is a little bit different
link |
because of that we behave differently because of that.
link |
And so especially postnatally,
link |
experience is extremely important.
link |
We are born with a plastic brain.
link |
What that means is a brain that is able to change
link |
in response to stimuli.
link |
They can be sensory.
link |
So perhaps some of the most illuminating studies
link |
that were done were studies in which
link |
the sensory organs were not working, right?
link |
If you are born with eyes that don't work,
link |
then your very brain, the piece of the brain
link |
that normally would process vision, the visual cortex
link |
develops postnatally differently
link |
and it might be used to do something different, right?
link |
So that's the most extreme.
link |
The plasticity of the brain, I guess,
link |
is the magic hardware that it,
link |
and then its flexibility in all forms
link |
is what enables the learning postnatally.
link |
Can you talk about organoids?
link |
And how can you use them to help us understand
link |
the brain and the development of the brain?
link |
This is very, very important.
link |
So the first thing I'd like to say,
link |
please keep this in the video.
link |
The first thing I'd like to say is that an organoid,
link |
a brain organoid, is not the same as a brain, okay?
link |
It's a fundamental distinction.
link |
It's a system, a cellular system,
link |
that one can develop in the culture dish
link |
starting from stem cells that will mimic some aspects
link |
of the development of the brain, but not all of it.
link |
They are very small, maximum,
link |
they become about four to five millimeters in diameters.
link |
They are much simpler than our brain, of course,
link |
but yet they are the only system
link |
where we can literally watch a process
link |
of human brain development unfold.
link |
And by watch, I mean study it.
link |
Remember when I told you that we can't understand
link |
everything about development in our own brain
link |
by studying a mouse?
link |
Well, we can't study the actual process
link |
of development of the human brain
link |
because it all happens in utero.
link |
So we will never have access to that process ever.
link |
And therefore, this is our next best thing,
link |
like a bunch of stem cells that can be coaxed
link |
into starting a process of neural tube formation.
link |
Remember that tube that is made by the embryo rion?
link |
And from there, a lot of the cell types
link |
that are present within the brain
link |
and you can simply watch it and study,
link |
but you can also think about diseases
link |
where development of the brain
link |
does not proceed normally, right, properly.
link |
Think about neurodevelopmental diseases
link |
that are many, many different types.
link |
Think about autism spectrum disorders,
link |
there are also many different types of autism.
link |
So there you could take a stem cell
link |
which really means either a sample of blood
link |
or a sample of skin from the patient,
link |
make a stem cell, and then with that stem cell,
link |
watch a process of formation of a brain organoid
link |
of that person, with that genetics,
link |
with that genetic code in it.
link |
And you can ask, what is this genetic code doing
link |
to some aspects of development of the brain?
link |
And for the first time, you may come to solutions
link |
like, what cells are involved in autism?
link |
So I have so many questions around this.
link |
So if you take this human stem cell
link |
for that particular person with that genetic code,
link |
how, and you try to build an organoid,
link |
how often will it look similar?
link |
What's the, yeah, so.
link |
Yes, or how much variability is the flip side of that, yeah.
link |
So there is much more variability in building organoids
link |
than there is in building brain.
link |
It's really true that the majority of us,
link |
when we are born as babies,
link |
our brains look a lot like each other.
link |
This is the magic that the embryo does,
link |
where it builds a brain in the context of a body
link |
and there is very little variability there.
link |
There is disease, of course,
link |
but in general, little variability.
link |
When you build an organoid, we don't have the full code
link |
for how this is done.
link |
And so in part, the organoid somewhat builds itself
link |
because there are some structures of the brain
link |
that the cells know how to make.
link |
And another part comes from the investigator,
link |
the scientist, adding to the media factors
link |
that we know in the mouse, for example,
link |
would foster a certain step of development.
link |
But it's very limited.
link |
And so as a result,
link |
the kind of product you get in the end
link |
is much more reductionist.
link |
It's much more simple than what you get in vivo.
link |
It mimics early events of development as of today.
link |
And it doesn't build very complex type of anatomy
link |
and structure does not as of today,
link |
which happens instead in vivo.
link |
And also the variability that you see
link |
one organoid to the next tends to be higher
link |
than when you compare an embryo to the next.
link |
So, okay, then the next question is how hard
link |
and maybe another flip side of that expensive
link |
is it to go from one stem cell to an organoid?
link |
How many can you build in like,
link |
because it sounds very complicated.
link |
It's work, definitely, and it's money, definitely.
link |
But you can really grow a very high number
link |
of these organoids, you know, can go perhaps,
link |
I told you the maximum they become
link |
about five millimeters in diameter.
link |
So this is about the size of a tiny, tiny, you know, raising
link |
or perhaps the seed of an apple.
link |
And so you can grow 50 to 100 of those
link |
inside one big bioreactors, which are these flasks
link |
where the media provides nutrients for the organoids.
link |
So the problem is not to grow more or less of them.
link |
It's really to figure out how to grow them in a way
link |
that they are more and more reproducible.
link |
For example, organoid to organoid,
link |
so they can be used to study a biological process
link |
because if you have too much of variability,
link |
then you never know if what you see
link |
is just an exception or really the rule.
link |
So what does an organoid look like?
link |
Are there different neurons already emerging?
link |
Is there, you know, well, first,
link |
can you tell me what kind of neurons are there?
link |
Are they sort of all the same?
link |
Are they not all the same?
link |
Is how much do we understand
link |
and how much of that variance
link |
if any can exist in organoids?
link |
Yes, so you could grow,
link |
I told you that the brain has different parts.
link |
So the cerebral cortex is on the top part of the brain,
link |
but there is another region called the striatum
link |
that is below the cortex and so on and so forth.
link |
All of these regions have different types of cells
link |
in the actual brain.
link |
And so scientists have been able to grow organoids
link |
that may mimic some aspects of development
link |
of these different regions of the brain.
link |
And so we are very interested in the cerebral cortex.
link |
That's the coolest part, right?
link |
We wouldn't be here talking if we didn't have a cerebral cortex.
link |
It's also, I like to think,
link |
the part of the brain that really truly makes us human,
link |
the most evolved in recent evolution.
link |
And so in the attempt to make the cerebral cortex
link |
and by figuring out a way to have these organoids
link |
continue to grow and develop for extended periods of time,
link |
much like it happens in the real embryo,
link |
months and months in culture,
link |
then you can see that many different types
link |
of neurons of the cortex appear
link |
and at some point also the astrocytes,
link |
so the glia cells of the cerebral cortex also appear.
link |
The astrocytes are not neurons,
link |
so they're not nerve cells,
link |
but they play very important roles.
link |
One important role is to support the neuron,
link |
but of course they have much more active type of roles.
link |
They're very important, for example,
link |
to make the synapses,
link |
which are the point of contact and communication
link |
between two neurons, they...
link |
So all that chemistry fun happens in the synapses
link |
happens because of these cells?
link |
Are they the medium in which?
link |
Happens because of the interactions,
link |
happens because you are making the cells
link |
and they have certain properties,
link |
including the ability to make neurotransmitters,
link |
which are the chemicals that are secreted to the synapses,
link |
including the ability of making these axons grow
link |
with their growth cones and so on and so forth.
link |
And then you have other cells around there
link |
that release chemicals or touch the neurons
link |
or interact with them in different ways
link |
to really foster this perfect process,
link |
in this case of synaptogenesis.
link |
And this does happen within organoids.
link |
Or with organoids.
link |
So the mechanical and the chemical stuff happens.
link |
The connectivity between neurons.
link |
This, in a way, is not surprising
link |
because scientists have been culturing neurons forever.
link |
And when you take a neuron, even a very young one,
link |
and you culture it, eventually finds another cell
link |
or another neuron to talk to, it will form a synapse.
link |
Are we talking about mice neurons?
link |
Are we talking about human neurons?
link |
It doesn't matter, both.
link |
So you can culture a neuron like a single neuron
link |
and give it a little friend and it starts interacting?
link |
Yes. So neurons are able to...
link |
It sounds... It's more simple than what it may sound to you.
link |
Neurons have molecular properties and structural properties
link |
that allow them to really communicate with other cells.
link |
And so if you put not one neuron,
link |
but if you put several neurons together,
link |
chances are that they will form synapses with each other.
link |
So an organoid is not a brain.
link |
But there's some...
link |
It's able to, especially what you're talking about,
link |
mimic some properties of the cerebral cortex, for example.
link |
So what can you understand about the brain
link |
by studying an organoid of the cerebral cortex?
link |
I can literally study all this incredible diversity of cell type,
link |
all these many, many different classes of cells.
link |
How are they made?
link |
How do they look like?
link |
What do they need to be made properly?
link |
And what goes wrong?
link |
If now the genetics of that stem cell
link |
that I used to make the organoid came from a patient
link |
with a neurodevelopmental disease,
link |
can I actually watch for the very first time
link |
what may have gone wrong years before in this kid
link |
when its own brain was being made?
link |
Think about that loop.
link |
In a way, it's a little tiny rudimentary window
link |
into the past, into the time when that brain,
link |
in a kid that had this neurodevelopmental disease,
link |
And I think that's unbelievably powerful
link |
because today we have no idea of what cell types,
link |
we barely know what brain regions are affected in these diseases.
link |
Now we have an experimental system
link |
that we can study in the lab
link |
and we can ask what are the cells affected?
link |
When, during development, things went wrong.
link |
What are the molecules among the many, many different molecules
link |
that control brain development?
link |
Which ones are the ones that really messed up here
link |
and we want perhaps to fix?
link |
And what is really the final product?
link |
Is it a less strong kind of circuit and brain?
link |
Is it a brain that lacks a cell type?
link |
Is it a, what is it?
link |
Because then we can think about treatment
link |
and care for these patients that is informed
link |
rather than just based on current diagnostics.
link |
So how hard is it to detect through the developmental process?
link |
It's a super exciting tool
link |
to see how different conditions develop.
link |
How hard is it to detect that, wait a minute,
link |
this is abnormal development.
link |
That's how hard it, how much signals there,
link |
how much of it is it a mess?
link |
Because things can go wrong at multiple levels, right?
link |
You could have a cell that is born and built
link |
but then doesn't work properly
link |
or a cell that is not even born
link |
or a cell that doesn't interact with other cells differently
link |
and so on and so forth.
link |
So today we have technology
link |
that we did not have even five years ago
link |
that allows us to look, for example,
link |
at the molecular picture of a cell,
link |
of a single cell in a sea of cells with high precision.
link |
And so that molecular information
link |
where you compare many, many single cells
link |
for the genes that they produce
link |
between a control individual
link |
and an individual with a neurodevelopmental disease,
link |
that may tell you what is different, molecularly.
link |
Or you could see that some cells are not even made,
link |
for example, or that the process of maturation
link |
of the cells may be wrong.
link |
There are many different levels here
link |
and we can study the cells at the molecular level
link |
but also we can use the organoids to ask questions
link |
about the properties of the neurons,
link |
the functional properties,
link |
how they communicate with each other,
link |
how they respond to a stimulus and so on and so forth
link |
and we may get abnormalities there, right?
link |
And detect those, so how early is this work in the,
link |
maybe in the history of science?
link |
So, so, I mean, like, so if you were to,
link |
if you and I time travel a thousand years into the future,
link |
organoids seem to be, maybe I'm romanticizing the notion
link |
but you're building not a brain
link |
but something that has properties of a brain.
link |
So it feels like you might be getting close to,
link |
in the building process, to build us to understand.
link |
So how far are we in this understanding
link |
process of development?
link |
A thousand years from now, it's a long time from now.
link |
So if this planet is still gonna be here,
link |
a thousand years from now.
link |
So I mean, if, you know, like they write a book,
link |
obviously there'll be a chapter about you.
link |
That's probably the science fiction book today.
link |
But I mean, I guess where we really understood
link |
very little about the brain a century ago,
link |
where I was a big fan in high school,
link |
reading Freud and so on, still am of psychiatry.
link |
I would say we still understand very little
link |
about the functional aspect of just,
link |
but how in the history of understanding
link |
the biology of the brain, the development,
link |
how far are we along?
link |
It's a very good question.
link |
And so this is just, of course, my opinion.
link |
I think that we did not have technology,
link |
even 10 years ago or certainly not 20 years ago,
link |
to even think about experimentally investigating
link |
the development of the human brain.
link |
So we've done a lot of work in science
link |
to study the brain on many other organisms.
link |
Now we have some technologies which I'll spell out
link |
that allow us to actually look at the real thing
link |
and look at the brain, at the human brain.
link |
So what are these technologies?
link |
There has been huge progress in stem cell biology.
link |
The moment someone figured out how to turn a skin cell
link |
into an embryonic stem cell, basically,
link |
and that how that embryonic stem cell
link |
could begin a process of development again
link |
to, for example, make a brain,
link |
there was a huge, you know, advance.
link |
And in fact, there was a Nobel Prize for that.
link |
That started the field, really,
link |
of using stem cells to build organs.
link |
Now we can build on all the knowledge of development
link |
that we build over the many, many, many years
link |
to say, how do we make these stem cells?
link |
Now make more and more complex aspects
link |
of development of the human brain.
link |
So this field is young, the field of brain organoids,
link |
but it's moving fast.
link |
And it's moving fast in a very serious way
link |
that is rooted in labs with the right ethical framework
link |
and really building on, you know,
link |
solid science for what reality is and what is not.
link |
And, but it will go fast
link |
and it will be more and more powerful.
link |
We also have technology that allows us to basically study
link |
the properties of single cells
link |
across many, many millions of single cells,
link |
which we didn't have perhaps five years ago.
link |
So now with that, even an organoid
link |
that has millions of cells can be profiled in a way,
link |
looked at with very, very high resolution,
link |
the single cell level to really understand what is going on.
link |
And you could do it in multiple stages of development
link |
and you can build your hypothesis and so on and so forth.
link |
So it's not gonna be a thousand years.
link |
It's gonna be a shorter amount of time.
link |
And I see this as sort of an exponential growth
link |
of this field enabled by these technologies
link |
that we didn't have before.
link |
And so we're gonna see something transformative
link |
that we didn't see at all in the prior thousand years.
link |
So I apologize for the crazy sci fi questions,
link |
but the developmental process is fascinating to watch
link |
and study, but how far are we away from
link |
and maybe how difficult is it to build
link |
not just an organoid, but a human brain from a stem cell?
link |
Yeah, first of all, that's not the goal
link |
for the majority of the serial scientists that work on this
link |
because you don't have to build the whole human brain
link |
to make this model useful for understanding
link |
how the brain develops or understanding disease.
link |
You don't have to build the whole thing.
link |
So let me just comment on that, it's fascinating.
link |
It shows to me the difference between you and I
link |
is you're actually trying to understand the beauty
link |
of the human brain and to use it to really help
link |
thousands or millions of people with disease and so on, right?
link |
From an artificial intelligence perspective,
link |
we're trying to build systems that we can put in robots
link |
and try to create systems that have echoes
link |
of the intelligence about reasoning about the world,
link |
navigating the world.
link |
It's different objectives, I think.
link |
Yeah, that's very much science fiction.
link |
Science fiction, but we operate in science fiction a little bit.
link |
But so on that point of building a brain,
link |
even though that is not the focus or interest,
link |
perhaps, of the community, how difficult is it?
link |
Is it truly science fiction at this point?
link |
I think the field will progress, like I said,
link |
and that the system will be more and more complex in a way,
link |
But there are properties that emerge from the human brain
link |
that have to do with the mind, that may have to do with consciousness,
link |
that may have to do with intelligence or whatever.
link |
We really don't understand even how they can emerge
link |
from an actual real brain, and therefore, we cannot measure
link |
or study in an organoid.
link |
So I think that this field, many, many years from now,
link |
may lead to the building of better neural circuits
link |
that really are built out of understanding of how
link |
this process really works.
link |
And it's hard to predict how complex this really will be.
link |
I really don't think we're so far from, it makes me laugh, really.
link |
It's really that far from building the human brain.
link |
But you're going to be building something that is always
link |
a bad version of it, but that may have really powerful properties
link |
and might be able to respond to stimuli
link |
or be used in certain contexts.
link |
And this is why I really think that there is no other way
link |
to do this science, but within the right ethical framework.
link |
Because where you're going with this is also,
link |
we can talk about science fiction and write that book,
link |
and we could today.
link |
But this work happens in a specific ethical framework
link |
that we don't decide just as scientists, but also as a society.
link |
So the ethical framework here is a fascinating one,
link |
is a complicated one.
link |
Do you have a sense, a grasp of how we think about ethically,
link |
of building organoids from human stem cells to understand the brain?
link |
It seems like a tool for helping potentially millions of people
link |
cure diseases, or at least start to cure by understanding it.
link |
But is there more, is there gray areas that are ethical,
link |
that we have to think about ethically?
link |
We must think about that.
link |
Every discussion about the ethics of this
link |
needs to be based on actual data from the models that we have today
link |
and from the ones that we will have tomorrow.
link |
So it's a continuous conversation.
link |
It's not something that you decide now.
link |
Today, there is no issue, really.
link |
Very simple models that clearly can help you in many ways
link |
without much to think about.
link |
But tomorrow, we need to have another conversation,
link |
and so on and so forth.
link |
And so the way we do this is to actually really bring together
link |
constantly a group of people that are not only scientists,
link |
but also bioethicists, lawyers, philosophers, psychiatrists,
link |
and psychologists, and so on and so forth,
link |
to decide as a society, really, what we should
link |
and what we should not do.
link |
So that's the way to think about the ethics.
link |
Now, I also think, though, that as a scientist,
link |
I have a moral responsibility.
link |
So if you think about how transformative
link |
it could be for understanding and curing a neuropsychiatric
link |
disease, to be able to actually watch and study
link |
and treat with drugs the very brain of the patient
link |
that you are trying to study, how transformative
link |
at this moment in time this could be.
link |
We couldn't do it.
link |
Five years ago, we could do it now.
link |
Taking a stem cell of a particular patient
link |
and make an organoid for a simple and different
link |
from the human brain, it still is his process
link |
of brain development with his or her genetics.
link |
And we could understand perhaps what is going wrong.
link |
Perhaps we could use as a platform, as a cellular platform,
link |
to screen for drugs, to fix a process,
link |
and so on and so forth.
link |
So we could do it now, we couldn't do it five years ago.
link |
Should we not do it?
link |
What is the downside of doing it?
link |
I don't see a downside at this very moment.
link |
If we invited a lot of people, I'm sure there would be
link |
somebody who would argue against it,
link |
what would be the devil's advocate argument?
link |
So it's exactly perhaps what you alluded at
link |
with your question, that you are making a,
link |
enabling some process of formation of the brain
link |
that could be misused at some point,
link |
or that could be showing properties
link |
that ethically we don't wanna see in a tissue.
link |
So today, I repeat, today this is not an issue.
link |
And so you just gain dramatically from the science
link |
without, because the system is so simple
link |
and so different in a way from the actual brain.
link |
But because it is the brain,
link |
we have an obligation to really consider all of this, right?
link |
And again, it's a balanced conversation
link |
where we should put disease and betterment of humanity
link |
also on that plate.
link |
What do you think, at least historically,
link |
there was some politicization,
link |
politicization of embryonic stem cells,
link |
a stem cell research.
link |
Do you still see that out there?
link |
Is that still a force that we have to think about,
link |
especially in this larger discourse
link |
that we're having about the role of science
link |
in at least American society?
link |
Yeah, this is a very good question.
link |
It's very, very important.
link |
I see a very central role for scientists
link |
to inform decisions about what we should
link |
or should not do in society.
link |
And this is because the scientists
link |
have the firsthand look and understanding
link |
of really the work that they are doing.
link |
And again, this varies depending on
link |
what we're talking about here.
link |
So now we're talking about brain organoids.
link |
I think that the scientists need to be part
link |
of that conversation about what is,
link |
will be allowed in the future
link |
or not allowed in the future to do with the system.
link |
And I think that is very, very important
link |
because they bring reality of data to the conversation.
link |
And so they should have a voice.
link |
So data should have a voice.
link |
Data needs to have a voice.
link |
Because in not only data, we should also be good
link |
at communicating with non scientists the data.
link |
So there has been, often time,
link |
there is a lot of discussion and excitement
link |
and fights about certain topics
link |
just because of the way they are described.
link |
I'll give you an example.
link |
If I called the same cellular system,
link |
we just talked about a brain organoid.
link |
Or if I called it a human mini brain,
link |
your reaction is gonna be very different to this.
link |
And so the way the systems are described,
link |
I mean, we and journalists alike
link |
need to be a bit careful that this debate
link |
is a real debate and informed by real data.
link |
That's all I'm asking.
link |
And yeah, the language matters here.
link |
So I work on autonomous vehicles
link |
and there the use of language could drastically
link |
change the interpretation and the way people feel
link |
about what is the right way to proceed forward.
link |
You are, as I've seen from a presentation,
link |
I saw you show a couple of pictures of your son.
link |
Is it just the one?
link |
Son and a daughter.
link |
Son and a daughter.
link |
So what have you learned from the human brain
link |
by raising two of them?
link |
More than I could ever learn in a lab.
link |
What have I learned?
link |
I've learned that children really have
link |
these amazing plastic minds, right?
link |
That we have a responsibility to, you know,
link |
foster their growth in good, healthy ways
link |
that keep them curious, that keep some adventures,
link |
that doesn't raise them in fear of things.
link |
But also respecting who they are,
link |
which is in part, you know, coming from the genetics
link |
we talked about, my children are very different
link |
from each other despite the fact
link |
that they're the product of the same two parents.
link |
I also learned that what you do for them
link |
comes back to you.
link |
Like, you know, if you're a good parent,
link |
you're gonna, most of the time have, you know,
link |
perhaps decent kids at the end.
link |
So what do you think, just a quick comment,
link |
what do you think is the source of that difference?
link |
It's often the surprising thing for parents.
link |
I can't believe that our kids,
link |
they're so different, yet they came from the same parents.
link |
Well, they are genetically different.
link |
Even they came from the same two parents
link |
because the mixing of gametes,
link |
so when we know these genetics,
link |
creates every time a genetically different individual
link |
which will have a specific mix of genes
link |
that is a different mix every time from the two parents.
link |
And so they're not twins.
link |
They're genetically different.
link |
Just that little bit of variation.
link |
As you said, really from a biological perspective,
link |
the brains look pretty similar.
link |
Well, so let me clarify that.
link |
So the genetics you have, the genes that you have,
link |
that play that beautiful orchestrated symphony
link |
of development, different genes
link |
will play it slightly differently.
link |
It's like playing the same piece of music
link |
but with the different orchestra
link |
and a different director, right?
link |
The music will not come out.
link |
It will be still a piece by the same author
link |
but it will come out differently
link |
if it's played by the high school orchestra
link |
instead of the, instead of the Scala in Milan.
link |
And so you are born superficially with the same brain.
link |
It has the same cell types, similar patterns of connectivity
link |
but the properties of the cells
link |
and how the cells will then react to the environment
link |
as you experience your world will be also shaped
link |
by who genetically you are.
link |
Speaking just as a parent,
link |
this is not something that comes from my work.
link |
I think you can tell at birth
link |
that these kids are different
link |
and that they have a different personality in a way, right?
link |
So both is needed.
link |
The genetics as well as the nurturing afterwards.
link |
So you are one human with a brain
link |
sort of living through the whole mess of it.
link |
The human condition, full of love, maybe fear,
link |
ultimately mortal.
link |
How has studying the brain changed the way you see yourself?
link |
When you look in the mirror, when you think about your life,
link |
the fears, the love.
link |
When you see your own life, your own mortality.
link |
Yeah, that's a very good question.
link |
It's almost impossible to dissociate some time for me.
link |
Some of the things we do or some of the things
link |
that other people do from,
link |
oh, that's because that part of the brain
link |
is working in a certain way.
link |
Or thinking about a teenager,
link |
going through teenage years and being a time funny
link |
in the way they think.
link |
And impossible for me not to think it's because
link |
they're going through this period of time called
link |
critical periods of plasticity.
link |
Where their synapses are being eliminated here and there
link |
and they're just confused.
link |
And so from that comes perhaps a different take
link |
on that behavior or maybe I can justify scientifically
link |
in some sort of way.
link |
I also look at humanity in general
link |
and I am amazed by what we can do
link |
and the kind of ideas that we can come up with.
link |
And I cannot stop thinking about
link |
how the brain is continuing to evolve.
link |
I don't know if you do this,
link |
but I think about the next brain sometimes.
link |
Where are we going with this?
link |
Like what are the features of this brain
link |
that evolution is really playing with
link |
to get us in the future, the new brain?
link |
It's not over, right?
link |
It's a work in progress.
link |
So let me just a quick comment on that.
link |
Do you see, do you think there's a lot of fascination
link |
and hope for artificial intelligence
link |
of creating artificial brains?
link |
You said the next brain.
link |
When you imagine over a period of a thousand years
link |
the evolution of the human brain,
link |
do you sometimes envisioning that future
link |
see an artificial one?
link |
Artificial intelligence as it is hoped by many,
link |
not hoped, thought by many people
link |
would be actually the next evolutionary step
link |
in the development of humans.
link |
Yeah, I think in a way that will happen, right?
link |
It's almost like a part of the way we evolve.
link |
We evolve in the world that we created,
link |
that we interact with, that shape us as we grow up
link |
and so on and so forth.
link |
Sometime I think about something that may sound silly,
link |
but think about the use of cell phones.
link |
Part of me thinks that somehow in their brain
link |
there will be a region of the cortex
link |
that is attuned to that tool.
link |
And this comes from a lot of studies
link |
in model organisms where really the cortex
link |
especially adapts to the kind of things you have to do.
link |
So if we need to move our fingers in a very specific way,
link |
we have a part of our cortex that allows us to do
link |
this kind of very precise movement.
link |
An owl that has to see very, very far away
link |
with big eyes, the visual cortex, very big.
link |
It's the brain attunes to your environment.
link |
So the brain will attune to the technologies
link |
that we will have and will be shaped by it.
link |
So the cortex very well may be.
link |
Will be shaped by it.
link |
In artificial intelligence, it may merge with it,
link |
it may get enveloped and adjusted.
link |
Even if it's not a merge of the kind of,
link |
oh, let's have a synthetic element together
link |
with a biological one.
link |
The very space around us, the fact, for example,
link |
think about we put on some goggles of virtual reality
link |
and we physically are surfing the ocean, right?
link |
Like I've done it and you have all these emotions
link |
that come to you, your brain placed you in that reality.
link |
And it was able to do it like that
link |
just by putting the goggles on.
link |
I didn't take thousands of years of adapting to this.
link |
The brain is plastic, so adapts to new technology.
link |
So you could do it from the outside
link |
by simply hijacking some sensory capacities that we have.
link |
So clearly over recent evolution,
link |
the cerebral cortex has been a part of the brain
link |
that has known the most evolution.
link |
So we have put a lot of chips on evolving
link |
this specific part of the brain
link |
and the evolution of cortex is plasticity.
link |
It's this ability to change in response to things.
link |
So yes, they will integrate that we want it or not.
link |
Well, there's no better way to end it, Paola.
link |
Thank you so much for talking to me.
link |
You're very welcome.