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    Home > Biochemistry News > Biotechnology News > Engineers planted pancreas "organoids" to imitate real pancreas

    Engineers planted pancreas "organoids" to imitate real pancreas

    • Last Update: 2021-09-18
    • Source: Internet
    • Author: User
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    Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Manchester Institute in the United Kingdom have developed a synthetic gel that can be used to grow tiny pancreatic organs from human pancreatic cells, as shown in the picture


    Source: MIT/Cancer Institute Manchester Institute

    Engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) collaborated with scientists from the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute to develop a new method that uses healthy or cancerous pancreatic cells to create tiny replicas of the pancreas


    Using a special gel that mimics the extracellular environment around the pancreas, researchers were able to cultivate pancreatic "organoids", allowing them to study important interactions between pancreatic tumors and their environment


    "Repeatability is a major issue," said Linda Griffith, professor of the School of Teaching Innovation Engineering and professor of bioengineering and mechanical engineering


    The researchers also showed that their new gel can be used to cultivate other types of tissues, including intestinal and endometrial tissue


    Mimic microenvironment

    Traditionally, laboratories use commercially available tissue-derived gels to grow organic substances in laboratory petri dishes


    The gel they developed is based on polyethylene glycol (PEG), a polymer often used in medical applications because it does not interact with living cells


    One of the key features is the presence of peptide ligand molecules, which interact with integrins on the cell surface


    In this new study, Griffith and Jorgenson wanted to see if the gel could also be used to support the growth of normal pancreatic organs and pancreatic tumors


    Griffith’s laboratory developed a solution to produce the new gel, which was then tested in collaboration with Jorgensen’s laboratory, which studies the biology of pancreatic cancer


    Jorgensen said: "We got the protocol from Linda, we got the reagents, and then it worked


    He said that the other methods they tried were too complicated or did not reproduce the microenvironment seen in living tissue


    Patient-derived cells

    The researchers also showed that they can use the gel to grow organoids from patients' pancreatic cancer cells


    Griffith also plans to use the gel to grow and study the tissues of patients with endometriosis


    One of the advantages of this new type of gel is that it is completely artificially synthesized and can be easily prepared in the laboratory by mixing specific precursors (including polyethylene glycol and some peptides)


    DOI 10.
    1038 / s41563-021-01085-1

    A microenvironment-inspired synthetic three-dimensional model for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma organoids


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