Meanwhile, biologists elsewhere were whipping up other
types of organoids, starting instead with adult stem cells.
A major challenge in creating
any type of organoid is determining the unique mixture of nutrients, growth factors, and tissue culture techniques that will transform patient tumor cells into miniature tumor organoids in a petri dish.
Not exact matches
The team calls the tiny spheres «
organoids,» simplified and miniaturized versions
of an organ, containing key
types of lung cells.
Kuo's
organoids contain a mix
of cell
types, which enables «observation
of higher - order behaviors such as muscle contraction,» he says.
«Because our hydrogel system is easily modified, we can just alter other parameters to create the mechanical and biological properties desired to support many
types of cells or
organoids,» said García, who holds the Rae S. and Frank H. Neely Chair.
The
organoids are entirely made up
of ductal cells, eliminating the surrounding cell
types that often contaminate samples from the pancreas.
To demonstrate the precision
of the technique and its ability to generalize to many different human tissue
types, the research team created several proof -
of - principle
organoid arrays mimicking human tissues such as branching vasculature and mammary glands.
These
organoids form all
of the cell
types present in human intestine, but they grow as cysts surrounded by thick extracellular matrix gels with their «apical» cell surface (which is normally exposed to the content
of the gut) facing an enclosed lumen.
«This is an exciting feature
of these
organoids because both cell
types are critcal for proper hearing and balance.»
The new cellular and molecular data uncovered in the current study will be «exploited in the future to further improve liver bud
organoids» and «precisely recapitulate differentiation
of all cell
types» in fetal human development, the authors write.
Next - generation «designer matrices» such as hybrid polyethylene glycol hydrogels or microengineered collagen scaffolds, combined with a well - defined set
of laminins, may better fulfill the niche requirements
of organoids and may be customized for a specific
type of tissue /
organoid (2,6).
First, most currently generated
organoids mainly contain epithelial cells and are void
of the many different cell
types that are essential for the morphology and functionality
of the whole organ.
The intestinal
organoids that grew from these elements developed several
of the singular characteristics
of that tissue
type, including small knobby protrusions (crypts) that in full - size intestines serve as receptacles for stem cells.
Researchers had developed the technologies needed to create
organoids years before — how to grow cells in culture, how to isolate stem cells from human tissue, and how to coax the stem cells, undifferentiated and immature, to become specific
types of cells at later stages
of development.
The resulting
organoids sported different tissue
types and were «similar» to the kidney
of a human embryo, the researchers reported.
Researchers are also beginning to «fuse» different
organoid types to approximate the kinds
of linked systems Ingber achieves with organs - on - chips.
He then describes a few more problems:
organoids don't display white matter (a prominent component
of human brains), lack some cells
types and don't have sensory input.