Researchers successfully grew functional three-dimensional human stomach tissue in the lab using pluripotent stem cells, which can become any cell type.
The research team used these mini-stomachs, dubbed gastric organoids, to look at H. pylori bacterial infections, which can cause stomach ulcers and even cancer, Cincinnati Children's Hospital reported. The study is the first to molecularly generate 3-D human gastric organoids (hGOs).
"Until this study, no one had generated gastric cells from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs)," Jim Wells, PhD, principal investigator and a scientist in the divisions of Developmental Biology and Endocrinology at Cincinnati Children's. "In addition, we discovered how to promote formation of three-dimensional gastric tissue with complex architecture and cellular composition."
Creating these stomachs could help us understand more about the organ, leading to medical advances such as new cancer treatments and ways to allow gastric-bypass patients to become diabetes-free after surgery. The key to their achievement was to identify the steps involved in embryonic stomach formation and manipulating these processes in a petri dish.
To make their findings the researchers looked at a combination of published work and studies from their own lab. Over a two year period the researchers experimented with differnet factors that drive the formation of the stomach in order to create the 3-d human oganoids.
The method allowed the researchers to coax the pluripotent stem cells to transform into stomach cells. The lab-grown stomachs developed over the course of about a month and grew to be about one-tenth of an inch in diameter.
The researchers observed the H. pylori infecting the epithelial tissues of these organoids at an impressive speed; within 24 hours the bacteria had triggered biochemical changes to the organ, such as the activation of the cancer gene c-Met.
The findings were published Oct. 29 in the journal Nature.
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