DR ANDI HORVATH
I'm Dr Andi Horvath. Thanks for joining us. Today we bring you up close to bio medical laboratories that study diseases by growing tiny immature clumps of cells that actually resemble organs. They are known as the organoids. In the last few years scientists have cracked the recipe on how to grow these miniscule organs in a dish. They are lentil sized balls of cells and their life span is only months, but they resemble the features of our developing brains, our livers, out guts, kidneys, prostates and pancreas. In fact, the list of organoids is rapidly expanding. This laboratory technology means we can now study our biology in action outside a patient's body. They are already being used to understand developmental diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and cancers.
On Up Close today, we're going to be talking to Professor Steve Petrou from the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, as well as the Department of Medicine Melbourne. Also joining us is University of Melbourne's, Dr Mirella Dottori from the Centre of Neural Engineering and the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Steve uses organoids to model the condition of epilepsy...
