Bexorg, a five-year-old biotech startup spun out of Yale University, has used its proprietary BrainEx perfusion machines to study more than 700 donated human brains — each kept in a metabolically active state for up to 24 hours after the donor’s death while experimental drugs are tested on it. The company is now scaling up: a new lab equipped with a 1.2-meter robotic arm will process up to 1,600 brains per year and analyze 11,000 proteins per brain. Pharmaceutical partner Biohaven has already received FDA clearance to begin clinical trials of BHV-8100 — a compound designed to boost neuronal energy metabolism by improving glucose efficiency — based in part on data generated through Bexorg brains, according to a Science report published May 19.
The technology traces back to a 2019 Nature paper in which Bexorg co-founders Zvonimir Vrselja and neuroscientist Nenad Sestan restored biological functions in pig brains obtained from a slaughterhouse, a result that immediately raised ethical questions about consciousness and pain. For the human brain program, Bexorg uses anesthesia to suppress electrical activity entirely, and bioethicist Brendan Parent of New York University noted that the organs are already almost devoid of the coordinated neural firing required even for minimal consciousness. Still, the company has published no peer-reviewed papers on its human brain work to date, though Vrselja said the first manuscript is in preparation. Biohaven’s chief science officer Bruce Car described the platform as delivering everything it had promised, saying it could shave years and millions of dollars off traditional CNS drug development pipelines.