Bexorg’s BrainEx platform perfuses post-mortem human brains for 24 hours to test neurodegeneration drugs, with 700+ brains processed to date.
Key Takeaways
BrainEx pumps oxygenated blood substitute through donated brains kept metabolically active but electrically suppressed via propofol anesthesia.
Biohaven found one Parkinson’s drug hit its target in human brains at 1/20th the originally calculated dose, saving roughly a year of development.
FDA approved Biohaven’s IND for BHV-8100 (metabolic enzyme booster) partly on Bexorg brain data; clinical trial launching soon.
New lab targets 1,600 brains/year with robotic slicing and 11,000-protein proteomics per brain; NeuroLens ML model aims to enable virtual drug testing.
Known limits: no electrical activity means seizure liability cannot be assessed; lymphatic drainage and blood-flow dynamics may differ from living brains.
Hacker News Comment Review
Early discussion questions whether “alive vs. dead” is even a coherent binary at the cellular and biochemical level, suggesting the ethical framing may be a category error rather than a real boundary.
