Fraunhofer Agriculture and Food Industry AllianceHuman primary cell-based intestinal models
The intestine is the largest internal organ of the human body with multiple functions that arise from the structural and cellular composition of the intestinal epithelium. While the vilus regions of the epithelium predominantly contain differentiated cells with different functions, stem and precursor cells of the epithelium are located in the intestinal crypts.
In vitro, the stem cells of the epithelium can be cultivated as organoids, which are used to construct human Transwell®-like tissue models with a biological extracellular matrix as scaffold. After maturation in vitro, all cell types of the human epithelium with characteristic structural and biological properties can be reproduced in the models.
Depending on the research question, the gastrointestinal models of the Fraunhofer TLC-RT are used in basic research, biocompatibility studies, drug and tox screening, disease modelling or infection studies.