Organoids: The Frontier of Personalized Medicine

The majority of research leading to medical breakthroughs is conducted using either animal tissues or cancer cells. The trouble with animal tissue is that it does not necessarily respond in the same way as human tissue. Both animal tissue and cancer cells pose challenges in that they do not necessarily behave in a laboratory environment  in the same way they do outside of it (in an animal or human body.)

The ultimate aim of medical research is to sufficiently understand the human body as a whole in order to discover and invent medical solutions to biological problems, but ethical constraints make it impossible to experiment on the body as a whole, necessitating the substitution of animal tissues or cancer cells.

In other words, there is an enormous gap between what can ethically be experimented on (a tissue or cell sample) and what this tissue or cell sample is trying to yield information about (the body as an integrated whole, or at the very least, a particular organ or system within it).

This gap is not simply quantitative but qualitative. That is, not only is the gap one of literal size (between a tissue sample and an actual organ), but more importantly and dauntingly, one of kind. This is because traditional tissue and cell samples as cultured in a laboratory are simply a layer of biological material that bears no resemblance to the three-dimensional structure of the organs of an animal or human being.

But now that researchers have learned to grow organoids, this gap is beginning to be closed.

Organoids, as their very name suggests, are organ-like clusters of cells that resemble actual organs (like the heart or lungs) in their three-dimensional structure. For example, intestinal organoids form a ball with a hollow center that “erupts” in multiple nodes that form tubule extensions.

Organoids are grown from stem cells, an achievement only made possible by the discovery of the specific conditions necessary for sustaining stem cells outside the body. Organoids were first grown from intestinal stem cells but have since been grown from liver stem cells, brain stem cells, and even breast stem cells.

Organoids represent significant research advantages in that they contain a much greater diversity of cells than traditional cell cultures in which every cell is the same. This allows researchers to discern the relationship between different kinds of cells under different conditions, to detect potential pathways of infection (depending on which cells are vulnerable to the introduction of pathogens), and to track the response (or lack thereof) of different cells to different treatments.

Organoids currently represent a frontier in personalized medicine. Organoids grown from patient biopsies make it possible to research differences between individual patient’s responses to specific drugs. Rather than patients enduring the time-consuming and potentially risky process of trying multiple drug combinations, researchers can instead test treatments on organoids grown from the patient’s own stem cells to quickly determine the most effective approach.

Organoids can currently be grown from tumor biopsies to identify the best chemotherapy combination for individual patients. Though this use of organoids is currently within the scope of existing scientific know-how, the process for growing organoids will need to become quicker and less costly to become integrated into standard oncology practice. Notwithstanding their relatively new arrival on the medical research scene, organoids show incredible promise for the future of personalized medicine.

At Lifecycle Biotechnologies, in our role of providing leading-edge tools and services to medical research labs, we’re committed to keeping abreast of the latest scientific discoveries and breakthroughs. In doing so, we aim to better understand and respond to the needs of the rapidly evolving industry and support our diverse client population across multiple disciplinary domains and market segments.

If you’d like to see how our innovative tools and services can help your lab scale for the research methodologies of the future, contact us today and see what we can do for you.