Crypt Builders

When you pop a paracetamol, it travels through your gut where it's absorbed into your bloodstream. Every drug you take orally needs to make this journey. To develop drugs that do this well, researchers need models of gut tissue that closely mimic our actual gut lining, including its crypt-like structures. This study reveals a new way to do this using human induced pluripotent stem cells. First, these stem cells were grown into gut-like tissues called intestinal organoids. Next, the dissociated organoids were grown in a dish that allows the tops of the cells to be exposed to air, while their bottoms are submerged in nutrient-rich cell culture liquid. Adding a mix of key chemicals to this unusual air-liquid interface format encouraged the cells to organise into crypt-like structures – imaged here in 3D – that closely resemble real-life gut tissue.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Video from work by Isamu Ogawa and colleagues
• Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Nagoya City University, Nagoya, Japan
• Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Biology Open, January 2025