Being able to grow human organs would not only be a boon for patients that may receive these to replace their diseased organs, but probably more importantly as a platform on which to study the diseases and test new drugs and therapies. Now researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center have reported in journal Nature Medicine that they managed to grow human intestinal organoids (HIOs) within lab mice that were induced to grow from a single cell harvested from a patient and induced into a pluripotent stem cell.
In the shorter term, the technology may soon help physicians understand the specific nature of patients’ unique intestinal conditions and perhaps test drugs on the mice before deciding which to prescribe to patients. It’s certainly a brave new world out there in medicine, while the mice are stuck doing much of the sacrificing.
