GI highlights from the literature

Basic scienceColonic organoids: no longer be-hind in modelling disease

Crespo M, Vilar E, Tsai SY, et al. Colonic organoids derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells for modelling colorectal cancer and drug testing. Nat Med 2017. doi: 10.1038/nm.4355. (Epub ahead of print)

The ability to grow gastric and small intestinal organoids from human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) has allowed us to model intestinal biology adeptly. To date, although colonic organoids (COs) can be grown from adult tissue, they have not been obtained from hiPSCs as the hindgut has proved more challenging a source. The authors have accomplished this from both human embryonic stem cells and hiPSCs. They first cultured heSCs with GSK3β inhibitor; modulating the Wnt pathway in this way gave rise to cells positive for CDX2, a hindgut marker. When hindgut cells were treated with a small molecule inhibitor of BMP, they gave rise to COs,...

http://ift.tt/2vKzEKZ