Inducted

Miniature models of anything, whether it’s toy trains or body parts, inevitably have to sacrifice a certain level of detail compared to their full-size counterparts. For organoids – tiny 3D structures grown in the lab to replicate organs and tissues in the body – maximising the amount of natural complexity they can faithfully replicate is a key factor in determining their use for research. Investigations into new pancreas organoids (pictured) revealed distinct structures, such as cells lining transport ducts (blue, top row) or stem cells and progenitor cells (blue, bottom row) needed for cellular repair and maintenance. The presence of these distinct structures means scientists can better study diseases like pancreatic cancer and cystic fibrosis, which affect specific ductal cells, and perhaps even use the platform for pancreatic tissue regeneration after damage, providing a potential platform for testing the impact of drugs and a route to personalised treatments.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Alessandro Cherubini and colleagues
• Precision Medicine Lab - Department of Transfusion Medicine, Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico; Unit of Cell and Gene Therapies, Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, Milan, Italy
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
• Published in Communications Biology, November 2024