Engineering Functional Stomach Tissue Organoids

Researchers continue to expand the types of tissue that can be produced in small amounts to form organoids, lacking the integrated blood vessel network needed to support larger sections, but otherwise at least partially functional. This stage of development in the tissue engineering field offers considerable benefits, both as a way to speed up research with a cheaper alternative to animal studies, but also the potential for transplantation. Even small tissue patches can be an effective therapy for some conditions: the tissue will integrate with the body, and blood vessels will grow in to support it. For organs that are essentially chemical factories or filters, such as the kidney and liver, transplant of numerous functional organoids grown from a patient's own cells may well prove to be good enough to address a number of presently incurable degenerative conditions. Here, researchers demonstrate construction of stomach tissue organoids:

Scientists report using pluripotent stem cells to generate human stomach tissues in a petri dish that produce acid and digestive enzymes. Researchers grew tissues from the stomach's corpus/fundus region. The study comes two years after the same team generated the stomach's hormone-producing region (the antrum). The discovery means investigators now can grow both parts of the human stomach to study disease, model new treatments and understand human development and health in ways never before possible. "Now that we can grow both antral- ...

Source: Fight Aging! - January 5, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs