Johns Hopkins engineer Annie Kathuria is exploring the next frontier in regenerative medicine: the potential to regrow the human brain. While current treatments can’t reverse severe brain damage, Kathuria, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, presented her vision on the emerging science of brain organoids—which could one day be surgically implanted to restore lost function—at a November 15, 2025 TEDxBoston talk.
“We can use human stem cells to grow a whole brain organ-like structure,” she said. “It is not science fiction—it is here in our lifetime.”
Kathuria discussed the scientific breakthroughs needed to create transplantable brain organoids, with a focus on three key elements: built-in blood supply, correct brain structure, and communication ability.
In the realm of a built-in blood supply (vascular networks), for example, developing a functional blood vessel system is critical because the transplanted tissue must be nourished to survive. Creating this complex network makes the lab-grown organoids graftable and viable for surgical implantation.
Kathuria said researchers must also engineer correct cortical layer formation, the intricate architecture that supports high-level cognitive abilities such as attention and memory. This will ensure that new tissue can actually restore abilities like attention and memory that are lost after injury.
As for the ability to communicate, Kathuria emphasized that the new tissue must be able to talk to the rest of the existing brain. The organoids must integrate and generate the specific electrical signals that the brain uses to send information, allowing the transplanted tissue to fully join the network and restore function.
Beyond future transplantation, Kathuria’s team is using these advanced organoids as more realistic, human-based platforms for studying complex neurological disorders —including Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and autism—and for screening new drug therapies with greater precision than traditional animal models.
She concluded the talk by urging support for this research, stating she hopes to see the first Phase I clinical studies of transplantable brain organoids within the next five years. “We already have the design and structure,” she said. “Together we can save humanity, heal the brain, and potentially move the field of transplant forward.”
Watch Kathuria’s TEDxBoston Talk titled “A new era in neuroregeneration” here: