Dr. Sergiu Pașcă

No, we're never going to renew neurons.

It's going to be different for liver cells or gut cell.

But for neurons, probably in particular, they'll need to keep track of time really, really well.

So that was like the first discovery that we've sort of like made, which is still stunning today.

We still don't know the mechanism.

We're still working really hard on figuring out exactly how the cells are keeping track of time.

Because as you can imagine, if we understand what that molecular machinery is, we used to call it a clock.

We now call it a timer.

We think it's more of a timer than an actual clock.

But understanding what the molecular biology of that is will allow us actually to play with that clock.

So if you want to make neurons that are 70 years old neuron from a patient with Parkinson, I don't have to wait 70 years in a dish.

Could I make it in a few weeks?

Or perhaps could I take an aging neuron and somehow rejuvenate it by playing with that timer?

But just to make it clear, we still don't know.

We have some clues about what it may be, but I think it's still early days.

And I think that was one of the first things that this culture's

allowed us to do.

Just watch development, human brain development, outside of the human body in a dish and actually witness that some fundamental aspects of brain development are actually recapitulated even outside of the uterus and, of course, of the brain.

So that was the first.

And then, of course...