Engineers planted pancreas "organoids" to imitate real pancreas

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