National Institutes of Health scientists have used human skin cells to create what they believe is the first cerebral organoid system, or “mini-brain,” for studying sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).

CJD is a fatal neurodegenerative brain disease of humans believed to be caused by infectious prion protein. It affects about 1 in 1 million people. The researchers, from NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), hope the human organoid model will enable them to evaluate potential therapeutics for CJD and provide greater detail about human prion disease subtypes than the rodent and nonhuman primate models currently in use.