Brains on chips? Novel Neuroscience and the Limits of Biomedical Models

• In Event: 41067 - Sociology of Neuroscience and Neurotechnology

Abstract

The use of non-human animal models in biomedical research has been foundational to biomedicine. However, the translational failures of animal models, particularly for neurological disorders, have been well documented. Developing new technologies to augment and replace animal models to better predict human relevance, safety, and efficacy in pre-clinical testing has been an area of significant public and private investment over the past decade. Researchers have focused on constructing new tools—leveraging developments in human-cell based models, in vitro platforms, and computational and machine learning technologies—to revolutionize etiological investigation and pre-clinical drug testing for neurological conditions. This manuscript examines the emergence and construction of “brain-on-a-chip” technologies, or brain chips, novel in vitro biomedical platforms that promise to bring human relevance to the earliest stages of biomedical research. I interrogate the construction of these biomedical models, investigating how they render complex conditions knowable on chip platforms, the ways in which they entrench particular understandings of neurological conditions, and how political economy shapes their design.

Author

• Melanie Jeske, Baylor College of Medicine