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In a major breakthrough, a team of researchers from India has begun a clinical trial seeking to revive a portion of the brain in patients who are brain dead. Researchers from two biotech companies, Bioquark, and Revita Life Sciences, will conduct the brain dead revival experiment, called the Reanima project, on a new drug formula called BQ-A-001, according to SingularityHub.

 The drug contains stem cells that researchers hope will grow into useful neurons, along with a number of different proteins and peptides that will break down damaged cells and create a microenvironment in which the stem cells can mature.

The clinical trial, which will take place at the Anupam Hospital in India, has already been approved by Institutional Review Board (IRB), an independent ethics committee.

The revival test will be carried out on 20 patients who were declared brain dead after traumatic injuries such as suffered in road accidents.

 The study will take place for six weeks and will involve multiple injections of the drug. At the end of the trial period, researchers will take an MRI to examine if there is any meaningful regeneration in the patients' brains, meaning not just tissue growth, but signs of actual structure.

"If one out of 100 or even 1,000 patients can be revived from the brain dead state into a coma or a minimally conscious state, it could mean that we need to change practice and add a few more hours of observation before someone is declared brain dead. Just adding to the six-hour window would be an achievement," said Dr Himanshu Bansal, owner of Anupam Hospital, according to The Hindu.

The researchers are keeping their goals modest for the initial trial. "We don't believe people will be independently breathing after six weeks," said Ira Pastor, the CEO of Bioquark, according to MINA.

"While full recovery...is indeed a long-term vision of ours...it is not the core focus or primary end point of this first study."

"It's not going to be decades. With everything going right, this is something that could happen sooner than we think. But it's not going to happen in six weeks."

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