Coaxing Colons

The gastrointestinal tract – the oesophagus, stomach and intestine – can suffer a host of diseases. General symptoms of gastrointestinal diseases can range from constipation and diarrhoea to vomiting. Because studying equivalent animal organs can’t precisely demonstrate how gastrointestinal diseases manifest in humans, researchers turned to engineering human stem cells to generate life-like colon tissue in the lab. To do so, they had to identify the correct genetic and molecular markers that could be used to precisely coax the stem cells into human colon organoids (pictured highlighting different molecules with various fluorescent colours). Researchers transplanted these organoids just under the surface of the kidney in mice – which provides a nutritious place for them to carry on growing – and saw that they adopted the form, structure and molecular properties of the human colon. In-depth research into the diseases of the colon can now be carried out effectively within this human model system.

Written by Katie Panteli

Katie Panteli

Writer

Katie, a Warwick Biomed graduate, works for a science-publishing house in London with some of the world's most respected scientific minds. She's most interested in human biology, anything and everything that makes us tick.

• Image from work by Jorge O. Múnera and colleagues
• Division of Developmental Biology, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, USA
• Image copyright Elsevier 20167
• Published in Cell Stem Cell, July 2017