‘Frankenstein Project’: Nenad Šestan’s Scientific Team Activates Pig Brain Outside the Body

American scientists have announced that they managed to keep a pig’s brain alive outside the body for 36 hours thanks to a system for circulating oxygen-rich fluid, agencies reported on Saturday.

Scientists led by neuroscientist Nenad Šestan from Yale University say that the brain was not conscious and add that their endeavor could aid research into brain function and the study of experimental therapies for diseases ranging from cancer to dementia, the British newspaper Guardian reported on Friday.

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The research, reported by MIT Technology Review, and which Šestan discussed at a meeting of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in March, has sparked divided reactions in the scientific community.

Anna Devor, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, assessed for MIT Technology Review that it could help researchers determine connections between brain cells and enable them to compile a “brain atlas.”

However, others quickly pointed out that this does not mean that people can expect to cheat death in the near future and that it is not possible to transplant a brain into a new body.

“The brain of that animal was not aware of anything, I am strongly convinced of that,” Šestan said at the NIH meeting.

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However, he noted that many ethical questions arise. “Hypothetically, someone could take that technology and improve it to restore someone’s brain activity. That is the restoration of a human being. If that person had memories, I would be completely horrified.”

Frances Edwards, a professor of neurodegeneration at University College London, told the Guardian that the research could be useful for researchers, but it is unlikely that it could be replicated in humans and dismissed the idea of transplants.

“It would be a huge, largely impossible step to reach this point with a human brain. In both pigs and humans, the entire brain is only available after death, but with pigs, you take a healthy animal and can control when and how it will die and immediately take the brain. It must be cooled within minutes and reheated when supplied with oxygen,” she said.

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This would not be possible in humans, she said, noting that in the case of a human being declared brain dead, “by the time the brain would be available, it would be largely damaged.”

Media reports indicate that Šestan and his colleagues used more than 100 pigs from which they obtained brains from a slaughterhouse. The researchers then used a sophisticated system of pumps, heaters, and artificial blood called BrainEx to keep the cells alive by establishing circulation of oxygen-rich fluid through the organ.

This is not the first time an animal’s brain has been kept alive outside the body. Previously, this was achieved with guinea pigs, and Edwards notes that the brainstem and hearts of rodents, including mice, have also been maintained outside the body.

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However, she adds that the new breakthrough is still impressive. “The impressive part is that they seem to have succeeded in delivering oxygen to the entire large brain.”