Growing human cells in the lab is an essential part of biomedical research. Without these cells it would not be possible to perform basic experiments to understand cell biology and the effects of chemicals which have the potential to be used as drugs.
However, until a decade ago, all cells grown in the lab were cultured as single cell types, in two dimensions. This does not truly represent what goes on in the human body, where organs have a defined shape and are composed of many cell types interacting together to perform a function. The same can be said for cancer, since tumours are never flat or made of one cell type.
A breakthrough in 2009 saw the development of ‘organoids’. These are three-dimensional cell structures, like miniature hollow spheres, containing all the cell types representing the organ from which they are grown. They are started from the biopsies of consenting donors undergoing an operation. Organoids can be initiated from the cells of various organs such as the intestine, liver and even brain. Organoids made from either intestine or stomach are called ‘mini-guts’.
Cells from a biopsy are incubated with a mixture of biochemicals, which provide the signals and nutrients for cells to grow. When these balls of cells start growing in the lab they have a diameter which is less than the width of a human hair. Then, over a period of two weeks, they grow to around five millimetres in diameter. The ‘mini-guts’ that form are hollow cavities surrounded by a simplified intestinal lining, having nutrient-absorbing protrusions.
By mimicking both the protein make-up and the overall cell organisation of the intestine, such ‘mini-guts’ provide improved modelling of bowel cancers or intestinal inflammatory diseases and more accurate screening for drug efficacy or toxicity, improving patient therapies, while reducing the need for animal testing.
Locally, these ‘mini-guts’ are being used to study small chemical changes on proteins called methylations throughout colorectal cancer progression, in order to identify potential diagnostic markers.
This research is being led by Byron Baron and is supported by surgeons at Mater Dei Hospital and custom software developed by Incredible Web Ltd. Project Kme-CRC is financed by the Malta Council for Science & Technology, for and on behalf of the Foundation for Science and Technology, through the FUSION: R&I Technology Development Programme.
Did you know?
• The sound of a car door closing with a solid ‘thunk’, has been engineered using psychoacoustics to sound much more robust than it actually is.
• In 2016, Microsoft set up a Twitter chatbot that could learn to converse based on what people told it. It was using swear words by the next morning.
• One of the first cigarette filters, designed to make smoking safer, was partially made from asbestos.
• Kale, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage are all the same species of plant. They have just been selectively bred for different properties ‒ kale for leaves, broccoli for flowers, Brussels sprouts for buds.
• There is a basketball court on the floor above the courtroom in the US Supreme Court building. It is known as ‘The Highest Court in the Land’.
For more trivia see: www.um.edu.mt/think
Sound bites
• Humans are not the only species facing a potential threat from SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, according to a new study from the University of California, Davis. Analysis of ACE2, the main receptor that SARS-CoV-2 uses to bind and enter cells, across 410 vertebrate species reveals that many are potentially susceptible to infection by the novel coronavirus. They include a number of endangered and threatened species, notably apes and old world primates. The study could also reveal potential intermediate hosts and animal models for the virus.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200821161423.htm
• Scientists have demonstrated a new way to precisely target cells by distinguishing them from neighbouring cells that look quite similar. Even cells that become cancerous may differ from their healthy neighbours in only a few subtle ways. A central challenge in the treatment of cancer and many other diseases is being able to spot the right cells while sparing all others. In a paper recently published in Science, a team of researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle describe the design of new nanoscale devices made of synthetic proteins. These target a therapeutic agent only to cells with specific, predetermined combinations of cell surface markers. Remarkably, these ‘molecular computers’ operate all on their own and can search out the cells that they were programmed to find.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200820143838.htm
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