“It’s been historically very difficult to get new medicines for brain disorders, since a lot of research and solutions come from animal models, which often fail to replicate the unique features of the human brain,” says Prof Bardy, who is also the Lead Researcher of the Laboratory for Human Neurobiology at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), and founding-director of Brain Organoid Therapeutics.

“We’ve been working on remodelling human brain tissue in a petri dish. We do that by starting with skin cells and blood cells from patients and healthy donors.

We then convert these cells into stem cells and then push their development into live brain tissue.

The brain-in-a-dish technology has allowed world-first discoveries. In April, the team identified for the first time that chronic overactivity in the brain appears to be a fundamental mechanism contributing to cognitive deterioration in children diagnosed with Sanfilippo syndrome – a rare genetic condition that causes fatal brain damage and childhood dementia.

His team has also run world-first drug testing trials to identify currently available drugs that can be repurposed for conditions with no effective treatments.

Bardy is now commercialising this drug and toxin screening capability with Brain Organoid Therapeutics (BOT), providing access to high-quality human brain tissue models, neural phenotyping, drug screening and machine learning-based analytical capacity for pre-clinical research and translational studies.

“Millions of dollars are wasted in clinical trials for drugs that are ultimately toxic. Animal trials are important, but I believe we can provide a better human-relevant alternative that, until recently, did not exist,” Prof Bardy says.

“We are getting lots of interest from overseas companies to build more complex brain models, such as a brain with a specific disorder that drugs can then be tested on.”

In the area of brain cancer, Bardy is the scientific lead for a study seeking clinical trial funding to test novel approaches to treating glioblastoma – one of the most aggressive and deadly forms of brain cancer.

The trial would see whether delivering TFP directly into the brain during surgery can slow tumour recurrence and whether combining it with standard treatments improves outcomes.

The goal is to use brain tumour biopsies from each patient to guide treatment decisions and identify potential drug targets, says Prof Bardy.

“The vision is that we will be able to rapidly provide an advanced pathology analysis and feed this information back to the oncologist to select better patient-specific treatment.”

“It’s been historically very difficult to get new medicines for brain disorders, since a lot of research and solutions come from animal models, which often fail to replicate the unique features of the human brain,” says Prof Bardy, who is also the Lead Researcher of the Laboratory for Human Neurobiology at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), and founding-director of Brain Organoid Therapeutics.

“We’ve been working on remodelling human brain tissue in a petri dish. We do that by starting with skin cells and blood cells from patients and healthy donors.

We then convert these cells into stem cells and then push their development into live brain tissue.

The brain-in-a-dish technology has allowed world-first discoveries. In April, the team identified for the first time that chronic overactivity in the brain appears to be a fundamental mechanism contributing to cognitive deterioration in children diagnosed with Sanfilippo syndrome – a rare genetic condition that causes fatal brain damage and childhood dementia.

His team has also run world-first drug testing trials to identify currently available drugs that can be repurposed for conditions with no effective treatments.

Bardy is now commercialising this drug and toxin screening capability with Brain Organoid Therapeutics (BOT), providing access to high-quality human brain tissue models, neural phenotyping, drug screening and machine learning-based analytical capacity for pre-clinical research and translational studies.

“Millions of dollars are wasted in clinical trials for drugs that are ultimately toxic. Animal trials are important, but I believe we can provide a better human-relevant alternative that, until recently, did not exist,” Prof Bardy says.

“We are getting lots of interest from overseas companies to build more complex brain models, such as a brain with a specific disorder that drugs can then be tested on.”

In the area of brain cancer, Bardy is the scientific lead for a study seeking clinical trial funding to test novel approaches to treating glioblastoma – one of the most aggressive and deadly forms of brain cancer.

The trial would see whether delivering TFP directly into the brain during surgery can slow tumour recurrence and whether combining it with standard treatments improves outcomes.

The goal is to use brain tumour biopsies from each patient to guide treatment decisions and identify potential drug targets, says Prof Bardy.

“The vision is that we will be able to rapidly provide an advanced pathology analysis and feed this information back to the oncologist to select better patient-specific treatment.”