This week: Hannah Devlin explores how scientists are growing human brains in labs. Why are they so keen to explore the possibilities? What are the ethical concerns being raised by experts?

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In the mid-1990s a special little mouse crept its way into media headlines. Pink, hairless and fragile-looking, the little animal looked every bit as you would expect a mouse to – with one exception. He had a human ear growing from his back. “Ear Mouse”, as he came to be known, hinted that scientists were on the brink of extraordinary new capabilities that included being able to grow body parts in the lab.

Twenty years on, this vision is becoming a reality. 3D cell cultures known as “organoids” are allowing scientists to experiment on disembodied organs derived from human cells. And in recent years it has become possible to grow miniature versions of versions of the human brain.



To explore all this, Hannah Devlin speaks to Madeline Lancaster, a neuroscientist with the cell biology division of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge; Gray Camp, a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig; and Hank Greely, director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford Law School.