Question: How do you think the use of intestinal organoids can contribute to the research and development of personalized treatments for diseases related to nutrient absorption?

Eva Rath answered on 20 Jun 2023:

Intestinal organoids can take up nutrients, drugs, and other substances like the cells in your gut. If you give nutrients to the organoids, for example different sugars like fructose (a sugar that comes from fruits) and lactose (a sugar that comes from milk) you can investigate how much of the nutrient is absorbed. You can also add mixes of nutrients, because it is known that some nutrients alter the absorption of other nutrients. However, it is not always known why/ how they do this. Together with the nutrients, you can also give substances to the organoids that block certain transporters. By doing so, you can find out which transporter takes up which nutrient. In the case of people with malabsorption, organoids can be grown from their intestines and by comparing “healthy” and “malabsorptive” organoids, the reason of malabsorption could be found. In the end, it might be possible to find a drug that improves malabsorption.
In the end, a personalized treatment for malabsorption could be found similar to apporaches in cancer treatment:
The idea is (and for few patients this has already been done) to surgically remove the tumor and grow organoids from the tumor (breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer…). In the lab, these tumor organoids are treated with different anti-cancer drugs to find the one drug that works best in killing these specific cancer cells. This drug is then given to the patient to kill any cancer cell that might still be in the body.