Discovering Drug Side Effects with Human Neurons and AI

If we could predict how drugs might harm our nerves before they're even tested on people? That's what a new study is doing with a special system that mimics our body's tiny environments. Scientists used human nerve cells, grown from stem cells, and put them in a tiny structure called a microphysiological system (MPS). They then gave these cells different drugs to see what happened.Using a clever AI model, they looked at how the drugs affected the nerve cells' shape and size. This is important because some drugs can cause nerve damage, leading to problems like numbness or tingling in hands and feet. The AI could spot the harmful drugs and even tell if they were damaging the cell body or the long parts called axons. The results matched up with what doctors see in real patients with nerve problems. So, this new method could be a big help in finding out if a drug might cause nerve damage early on. It's like having a tiny, smart lab inside a test tube!