The Li lab at the Francis Crick Institute uses the bowel as a model to study how stem cells are programmed to maintain a healthy organ and what goes wrong when cancer develops. They are studying bowel stem cells growing in the lab in small three-dimensional clumps called organoids (also known as ‘mini-guts’). They also want to use this knowledge to grow replacement human gut tissue in the lab to use in organ transplants or for testing drugs.
The Li lab: Organoids (Video)
About INTENS
In the INTENS project, an EU-funded consortium of researchers across Europe focused on artificially growing segments of the small intestine, with the long-term aim to be able to deliver a functional small bowel. You can visit the project page here.
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