A May 2026 Science report on Connecticut startup Bexorg is drawing fresh attention online. The five-year-old company sustains disembodied human brains donated after death and uses them to test experimental drugs.

More than 700 human brains have been studied. Hours after death, tubes pump blood substitute through the organ, supplying oxygen and removing waste, while anesthesia quiets electrical activity. After 24 hours, the brain is sliced into hundreds of pieces.

The platform shows how potential treatments for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and ALS might work inside real human brains. Biohaven’s Bruce Car said a drug that failed in mice worked in human brains at a dose 20 times lower, and the FDA has approved Biohaven’s application to begin clinical trials of compound BHV-8100.

Safeguards against consciousness are central. The brains are almost devoid of the neural firing needed for minimal consciousness, and the company uses the anesthetic propofol, said bioethicist Brendan Parent of NYU Langone Health.

The work is reviving debate over the ethics of using donated human brains in research.