organoids tagged posts

This is a bird’s eye view of a microwell plate containing kidney organoids, generated by liquid handling robots from human stem cells. Yellow boxed region is shown at higher magnification. Red, green, and yellow colors mark distinct segments of the kidney. Credit: Freedman Lab/UW Medicine

Robotic approach could accelerate regenerative medicine research and drug discovery. An automated system that uses robots has been designed to rapidly produce human mini-organs derived from stem cells. Researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle developed the new system...

Human intestinal organoids (HIOs) generated in the hydrogel matrix differentiate into mature intestinal tissue and present specialized human intestinal cell types, such as enteroendocrine cells (CHGA; red), after transplantation into an animal. Credit: Ricardo Cruz-Acuña, Georgia Tech

By combining engineered polymeric materials known as hydrogels with complex intestinal tissue known as organoids – made from human pluripotent stem cells – researchers have taken an important step toward creating a new technology for controlling the growth of these organoids and using them for treating wounds in the gut that can be caused by disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)...

Researchers modeled kidney development and injury in kidney organoids (shown here), demonstrating that the organoid culture system can be used to study mechanisms of human kidney development and toxicity. Credit: Ryuji Morizane, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

The kidney structures formed could be used to study abnormalities of kidney development, chronic kidney disease, the effects of toxic drugs, and be incorporated into bioengineered devices to treat patients with acute and chronic kidney injury. In the longer term, these methods could hasten progress toward replacing a damaged or diseased kidney with tissue derived from a patient’s own cells.

CKD affects 9 – 11% of the U.S. adult population and is a serious public health problem worldwide...

Reconstituting epithelial microtissues with programmed size, shape, composition, spatial heterogeneity and embedding ECM Credit: http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/vaop/ncurrent/images/nmeth.3553-F3.jpg

A technique to build organoids of human tissues using a process that turns human cells into a biological equivalent of LEGO bricks has been developed. These mini-tissues in a dish can be used to study how particular structural features of tissue affect normal growth or go awry in cancer. They could be used for therapeutic drug screening and to help teach researchers how to grow whole human organs.

Called DNA Programmed Assembly of Cells (DPAC), thousands of custom-designed organoids, eg models of human mammary glands containing several hundred cells each, can be built in a matter of hours...