💡 Brains From Dead Donors Are Being Used To Test New Drugs

U.S. biotech startup Bexorg has developed BrainEx, a system that can keep human brain tissue metabolically active for up to 24 hours after a donor's death.

The organ is connected to an artificial circulation system: oxygen and a blood substitute are pumped through its vessels. Electrical activity is suppressed with anesthetics to rule out the possibility of consciousness. The brain is left literally balancing between life and death, while remaining metabolically active.

The platform lets researchers watch in real time how drugs for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and ALS penetrate brain tissue. The startup has already run tests on more than 700 brains.

🔍 According to Bexorg CEO Zvonimir Vrselja, a donor brain preserves a person's individual genetics and lifetime environmental exposure—something that cannot be recreated in animals. Today, 95–99% of central nervous system drugs fail in clinical trials. One of the main reasons is the gap between the mouse and human brains.

👨‍💻 The company trains AI models on the collected data. In the future, algorithms could first screen drug candidates on a digital twin of the brain before testing them on real tissue. The developers hope this approach will accelerate research and help bring new drugs to market more quickly.

Are these experiments ethical?

❤️ — Yes, they could save lives
🔥 — No, this goes against nature

@hiaimediaen