A team of bioresearchers working at the University of Cincinnati has earned a $4.6 million grant to fund their studies on diarrheal disease. Their novel approach involves growing human stomachs and intestinal tissue outside of the body in order to test treatments without putting humans at risk.
The UC work represents another step forward into the field of personalized medicine. We’ve seen advances in this field previously, as when the Mayo Clinic reproduced a human heart from bicep muscles. The field has promising and exciting implications; for instance, growing human organs outside the body makes it easier to transplant said organs and allows physicians to try treatments they think might work.
Unlike a heart, the human digestive system is comprised of several unique parts, all of which must be studied in tandem when considering diarrheal diseases. To create a faithful model, the team had to grow not only a stomach but also several minor intestinal organs called organoids.
"The goal of the research funded by this grant is to develop human gastrointestinal organoids as model systems to study gastrointestinal infectious diseases such as infections of Helicobacter pylori, E. coli 0157:H7 and Clostridium difficile,” says Dr. Alison Weiss, professor of biochemistry, microbiology, and molecular genetics at UC. She is pictured above with coauthor Dr. James Wells (photo courtesy UC).
In Weiss’ previous work, she used pluripotent stem cells to grow intestinal organoids of mice in a dish. This grant, and access to the renowned Digestive Health Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, should allow her to ramp up her research. "The ability to access the cores and services of the Digestive Health Center was a critical factor in the success of this proposal,” she adds in a UC press release.
The grant in question was a U19 grant from the National Institutes of Health. If funding information for the research at UC interests you, consider reading our free University of Cincinnati Funding Stats and Vendor Show Info report, accessible here:
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