[intense music] - [Narrator] Medical science has come a long way in it's ability to treat human diseases.

The trouble is, that process of developing new medical treatments and new medications is slow, and arduous, and expensive.

- [Dr. Yun] We start with the, the petri dish, and the pre-clinical study, and clinical studies.

And then finalize to the FDA approval.

This takes, a lot of years.

15-20 years.

- [Narrator] That's especially true with medical issues involving the brain.

Medicines must cross the blood brain barrier, protecting the brain.

Scientists must make sure the medication isn't rejected, and medicines must target the correct neurons.

Animal brains and human brains are too different to adequately test all of that, so researchers need to use a human brain, or something equivalent to it, for drug research.

Dr. Yun discovered how to solve the problem.

Create a brain cell from another type of cell.

- [Dr. Yun] Recently, the scientist found a way to generate the stem cell from the skin cell, and that allows to provide the tremendous amount of stem cell, I mean easily compared to what we have done before.

- [Narrator] Stem cells are the bodies master cells.

They are the building blocks of all the cells, the organs, and the tissues in the human body.

Using skin cells, called fibroblasts, and through a process called differentiation, Dr. Yun and his team created brain cells.

He calls them, mini brains.

- [Ira] The goal of our research, is to develop viable brain organoids or mini brains.

And the purpose of this is so we can simulate not only brain development, by how brains operate, when they're exposed to diseases, as well as possible therapies moving forward.

- [Jenora] It really can accelerate the discovery of new therapies and drug development.

The research that he's doing can reduce, and even replace, for some topics, the use of animals in research.

And so, the work that he's doing with the mini brain is really outstanding, and we're really excited about it.

- [Narrator] Dr. Yun's mini brain tissues will provide realistic and real-time data about how drug therapies will be able to access brain tissue, as well as the drugs' effects on brain tissues.

That mini brain model has already provided new insights into traumatic brain injury.

- [Dr. Yun] As engineers, we can really create the environments of the trauma, the brain injuries and see how the, the mini brain responds with these injuries.

- [Narrator] But the mini brain's greatest impact, may be in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease research.

That's because scientists are able to study the diseased cells in real time.

- [Balqees] So if you're able to take cells, from an Alzheimer's patient, and make the, an actual mini brain of it, and then be able to model the disease, and figure out what specific drug that would work best for it, which is what Dr. Yun is doing, I think that would save so many lives that would be very cost efficient, very, would save so many, so much time.

- [Narrator] The research could unlock more personalized medicine options for doctors to treat patients.

Medicines could be designed to treat particular symptoms, or specific stages of a disease.

As the mini brain model process is refined, Dr. Yun sees great opportunities.

- [Dr. Yun] It's quite expensive for the mini brain research right now, but I think the next couple of years with this, all the scientists and community, it will lower the cost a lot, then, I think, maybe everyone can have a mini brain.

I mean, in the futures.

[uplifting music]