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Amazing Science to Bold Medicine
Aaron Zorn, PhD, Center for Stem Cell & Organoid Medicine director: “We are doing something amazing at Cincinnati Children's. We’re growing human gastrointestinal tract in our research laboratories. Our scientists are bioengineering stomach, colon, liver and even intestinal tissue that have functioning nerves. And this is really a tremendous advance for precision medicine. We can use a child’s own cells to grow their GI tissue in the laboratory, and we can use this to study that child’s disease and find out clues on how to treat their condition."
After a decade of generating human mini-organs in the lab, Cincinnati Children’s is forming a center to accelerate technologies to improve patient care and launch a bold new era in personalized medicine.
The Center for Stem Cell and Organoid Medicine combines the medical center’s expertise in developmental and stem cell biology, medicine, biomedical informatics and genomics.
Michael Helmrath, MD, GI surgeon, Director of Translational Research: “So surgeons reconstruct the biliary systems, the GI systems, the esophagus with either native tissues, which is the best, or taking two ends and putting them together. But often when they are more complex, we have to use other structures, like other parts of the intestine, and move it into places to make up for that gap. Those are not ideal situations, that’s where we live today. They pose lifelong problems for these patients. The question is, can we use their own cells to grow and mitigate that problem so that we can put things together in the right way with the right tissue? The answer is yes, just not right today. That’s our goal.”
Jim Wells, PhD, Developmental Biologist and Chief Science Officer: "Today in the lab, we are using organoids made from patients that are actually in the hospital to discover unknown disease pathologies.
And then we’re working with the clinicians to try and improve the patient care. In the future, we will help develop and test new drugs for these patients with the hope of reversing disease symptoms, and diseases ranging from diabetes to digestive diseases. By mimicking these processes of normal organ development, we’re able to develop these new human organoid technologies. And of course, they have tremendous potential because they are human and used to study human disease in a dish. For bioengineering tissue – let’s say stomach or intestine – we start with pluripotent stem cells, which are remarkable because they can become any cell in the body. And they can be made from any patient that comes in the door. And we coax them to undergo these processes of organ development in a dish, where they come together and assemble to form specific organ tissues like stomach and intestine."
Zorn: “The Center for Stem Cell and Organoid Medicine at Cincinnati Children’s is really designed to move this amazing technology as quickly forward as possible to help treat these patients. You know, our goal is really well beyond gastrointestinal disease. Our scientists are starting to do similar research in lung, kidney and heart. The key to success is going to be getting help from industry, philanthropy and the medical center’s technology transfer team so that we can transfer this organoid technology to patient care pipeline as quickly as possible. Helping lead those endeavors is Dr. Takanorie Takebe (our associate director for commercialization). He is a global leader in generating human liver organoids.”
Takanori Takebe, MD Associate Director of Commercialization: “Back in 2010, I was actually a transplant surgery as a surgeon. What I saw there was patients just waiting to die because of donor shortage. What we see from the organoid application in the future is we can transplant organoid into the patients to provide a cure for such a patient's population who cannot be treated by conventional transplantation. That's actually my dream, to be able to rescue such a patient who is waiting.”
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