'Mini brains' offer fresh hope for repairing multiple sclerosis damage

Australian researchers are using laboratory-grown “mini brains” to investigate one of the biggest unanswered questions in multiple sclerosis research: how to repair the damage the disease causes to the brain.

The project, led by Dr Samantha Barton at The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, is among three initiatives funded through MS Australia’s 2026 Mid-Year MS Research Grants Round. Researchers will use human stem cells to grow three-dimensional models of the human brain to study how myelin, the protective coating surrounding nerve fibres, develops.

Damage to myelin is a defining feature of multiple sclerosis, a neurological disease in which the immune system attacks the central nervous system. Existing treatments can reduce relapses and slow disease activity, but they cannot repair damage that has already occurred.

Dr Barton said the laboratory models provided an opportunity to study myelin development in ways that conventional laboratory methods and animal models could not.