Startup Tests Drugs on Fresh Brains Kept Alive on Life Support

A biotech startup called Bexorg keeps recently donated human brains on its BrainEX life-support system, arguing the preserved brains offer a more realistic testbed for drugs (including Alzheimer’s candidates) than animal models. The brains hover between life and death, show no consciousness, and are dosed with anesthetic; after about 24 hours they’re sliced into hundreds of pieces for analysis. Bexorg aims to process up to 1,600 brains per year, while pharma firms like Biohaven have already used donor brains for drug testing, fueling ethical and philosophical debates over the use of near-living tissue in research.