The renowned scientific journal Cell and related sub-journals are publishing a special issue featuring no fewer than 26 publications presenting results from the international research of the Brain Initiative Cell Atlas Network (BICAN). These are the first results of years of international research led by the Allen Institute in Seattle.
Through Medical Delta partnership, scientists from Leiden, Delft and Amsterdam contributed to six of the papers. Among other things, they developed software to quickly navigate the enormous datasets of millions of brain cells.
The BICAN-project ultimately aims to map all 200 billion brain cells. This makes research into brain diseases and disorders much more targeted. It also developed a unified coding system. As a result, scientific studies align better with one another, because scientists speak the same language.
'Brain atlas' speeds up research into brain diseases and disorders
The recent Cell publications are an interim update on a long-term international research effort whose scale and potential are comparable to the Human Genome Project of the previous century. That project deciphered the human genetic code (DNA) and led to a range of breakthroughs.
One of the goals of the BICAN-project is to create a three-dimensional brain atlas. It will show down to the cellular level how a cell is composed and how it interacts with other cells. This makes it possible, for example, to investigate how brain diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's affect cells, and what effect potential medications have. This shortens the search for the right treatment.
Dutch researchers build a "navigation system"
Within the Medical Delta partnership, a research group of scientists from LUMC, TU Delft and VU Amsterdam built, among other things, the so-called "Cytosplore Viewer." This software is included in six of the Cell issue papers and works as a kind of navigation system that allows researchers to explore the atlas. "An ocean of search possibilities is reduced to a bathtub," says research leader and Medical Delta professor Prof. Dr. Boudewijn Lelieveldt (LUMC, TU Delft). "With the software, researchers can find their way more quickly to specific cells, cell properties and interactions that could be the key to treating a brain disease or disorder."
The first signs are promising. One of the Cell publications, for example, shows how deep-lying cells are also affected in Alzheimer's disease, meaning that drug development can specifically target these cells as well. Another publication shows that a rare cell type may be relevant for further research into schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
The Cytosplore Viewer is the result of intensive collaboration. "It would be impossible to develop something like this on our own," says Lelieveldt. The consortium consists of researchers from a wide range of disciplines, such as biomedical and molecular scientists from Leiden and Amsterdam, and software engineers and data analysts from Leiden and Delft. "Together, we have spent years developing the software into a ready-to-use, clear tool that other scientists can work with," says Prof. Dr. Thomas Höllt, who led the research from TU Delft.
Starting signal for further research
The results published so far concern the basal ganglia, a group of brain regions deep in the brain that play an important role in movement, learning, emotions and thinking. These brain regions are also involved in conditions and diseases such as Parkinson's.
The first publications in Cell mark the starting signal for further (medical) research into brain diseases and disorders, and at the same time pave the way for more research results from the BICAN-project. The research is "open source," which means that the data and findings are available to everyone.
Read also: <link to background article LUMC>
Further information
Read the international news release here
The Cell-publications can be found here
More information about the BICAN research can be found here
Photo 1: Medical Delta professor Boudewijn Lelieveldt (Eelkje Colmjon)
Photo 2: Researchers of the department of Radiology of LUMC (v.l.n.r.): Baldur van Lew, Thomas Kroes, Jeroen Eggermont, Boudewijn Lelieveldt, Soumyadeep Basu, Julian Thijssen, Chang Li en Alexander Vieth (Olivier Paalvast)
