Being able to grow human organs would not only be a boon for patients that may receive these to replace their diseased organs, but probably more importantly as a platform on which to study the diseases and test new drugs and therapies. Now researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center have reported in journal Nature Medicine that they managed to grow human intestinal organoids (HIOs) within lab mice that were induced to grow from a single cell harvested from a patient and induced into a pluripotent stem cell.
In the shorter term, the technology may soon help physicians understand the specific nature of patients’ unique intestinal conditions and perhaps test drugs on the mice before deciding which to prescribe to patients. It’s certainly a brave new world out there in medicine, while the mice are stuck doing much of the sacrificing.
From the study abstract in Nature Medicine:
These HIOs form mature human intestinal epithelium with intestinal stem cells contributing to the crypt-villus architecture and a laminated human mesenchyme, both supported by mouse vasculature ingrowth. In vivo transplantation resulted in marked expansion and maturation of the epithelium and mesenchyme, as demonstrated by differentiated intestinal cell lineages (enterocytes, goblet cells, Paneth cells, tuft cells and enteroendocrine cells), presence of functional brush-border enzymes (lactase, sucrase-isomaltase and dipeptidyl peptidase 4) and visible subepithelial and smooth muscle layers when compared with HIOs in vitro. Transplanted intestinal tissues demonstrated digestive functions as shown by permeability and peptide uptake studies. Furthermore, transplanted HIO-derived tissue was responsive to systemic signals from the host mouse following ileocecal resection, suggesting a role for circulating factors in the intestinal adaptive response.
Study in Nature Medicine: An in vivo model of human small intestine using pluripotent stem cells…
Cincinnati Children’s: Lab-developed intestinal organoids form mature human tissue in mice…