Mini organs from patient cells: UNSW video shows how treatments could be tested in advance
Tiny replicas of diseased organs could help find the most effective of hundreds of treatments. In a UNSW video, Professor Kris Kilian presents his lab's research.
Photo: Nreis1 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Video: YouTube · UNSW · youtube.com
The University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney published a video about Professor Kris Kilian's work on 19 October. According to the university, his team at the Laboratory for Advanced Biomaterials & Matrix Engineering is working towards growing tiny replica organs from the cells of patients with a disease.
The idea: hundreds of possible treatments could be tested on such mini organs – known in research as organoids – to find the most effective one for the individual before the patient is treated. Organoids are three-dimensional tissue cultures grown from stem cells that mimic the structure and function of an organ on a small scale.
As its name suggests, Kilian's lab works on biomaterials and the so-called matrix – the environment in which cells grow and which helps shape their behaviour. The university presents this as a possible future of disease treatment; the university does not cite specific study results in the video description.