Growing Guts

The prettiness of these coloured rings belies their serious practical potential. They're fragments of small intestine that have been grown from stem cells in a laboratory. It's hoped that such engineered tissues may one day be used to treat short bowel syndrome – a reduction in the length of functional bowel resulting from either surgical removal or disease. Premature babies with underdeveloped gastrointestinal tracts, for example, are prone to short bowel syndrome resulting from necrotising enterocolitis – a condition where parts of the intestine die. While intestinal transplants are one option for treating short bowel syndrome (and the consequent malnutrition), such surgeries come with a risk of transplant rejection. Growing intestine from a patient’s own stem cells avoids such risk and, encouragingly, advances in tissue engineering technology are enabling ever-larger pieces of intestine to be grown in culture. This once futuristic treatment idea is therefore becoming increasingly feasible.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image by Dr. Grikscheit, Children's Hospital Los Angeles (a member of the INTENS Consortium)
• The INTENS Consortium
• Image copyright held by Dr Grikscheit
• Research published in Cell Stem Cell, June 2019