科学家解锁规模化生产具有功能性神经的人类肠道类器官的技术

'Confined culture system' developed at Cincinnati Children's opens doors for faster, wider use of lab-grown human tissues in disease studies and drug development

辛辛那提儿童医院开发的“封闭式培养系统”为疾病研究和药物开发中更快、更广泛地使用实验室培育的人体组织打开了大门。

Key Takeaways

关键要点

New system produces human gut organoids about twice as fast as prior methods.

新系统产生人类肠道类器官的速度大约是之前方法的两倍。

Gut organoids with functioning nerve cells can be grown to much larger sizes.

具有功能性神经细胞的肠道类器官可以生长到更大的尺寸。

Platform works for small intestine, colon, and stomach organoids, improving scalability and reproducibility.

平台适用于小肠、结肠和胃类器官，提高了可扩展性和可重复性。

This advance could expand organoid use in disease research, drug safety testing, and eventually regenerative medicine.

这一进展可能会扩大类器官在疾病研究、药物安全性测试以及最终再生医学中的应用。

CINCINNATI

辛辛那提

,

，

May 22, 2026

2026年5月22日

/PRNewswire/ -- Researchers at Cincinnati Children's report a breakthrough manufacturing advance that makes human gut organoids faster to produce, easier to scale and more biologically complete.

/PRNewswire/ -- 辛辛那提儿童医院的研究人员报告了一项突破性的制造进展，使得人类肠道类器官的生产速度更快、更易于扩展且生物完整性更高。

In a study published May 22, 2026, in

在2026年5月22日发表的一项研究中，

Nature Biomedical Engineering

自然生物医学工程

, the team describes a 'confined culture system' that generates human small intestine, colon and stomach organoids in about half the time required by prior methods while also enabling the tissues to develop their own functional nerve cells.

，该团队描述了一种“受限培养系统”，它可以在大约是先前方法所需时间的一半内生成人类小肠、结肠和胃的类器官，同时还能够使这些组织发育出自己的功能性神经细胞。

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Special molds designed by experts at Cincinnati Children's were part of a novel production process that resulted in advanced intestine organoids that grew faster and larger while producing their own nerve cells in addition to human intestinal tissues.

辛辛那提儿童医院的专家设计的特殊模具是新型生产流程的一部分，该流程产生了生长更快、更大的先进肠类器官，这些器官除了产生人体肠道组织外，还能生成自己的神经细胞。

The approach uses 3D-printed tray-like scaffolds with narrow grooves that physically confine multiple organoid spheroids, encouraging them to fuse, elongate and mature into tubular tissues. By day 14, the constructs had reached a stage that previously took 28 days, according to the authors.

该方法使用3D打印的托盘状支架，其狭窄的凹槽在物理上限制了多个类器官球体，促使它们融合、拉长并成熟为管状组织。据作者称，到第14天时，构建体已达到此前需要28天才能达到的阶段。

In rodent transplantation studies, all implanted tissues engrafted, and the researchers report generating up to 8 centimeters of functional small-intestine tissue compared with about 1 centimeter using earlier protocols.

在啮齿动物移植研究中，所有植入的组织都成功生长，研究人员报告称，与早期方案生成的约1厘米相比，他们生成了长达8厘米的功能性小肠组织。

The study, led by Holly Poling, PhD, with senior author Maxime Mahe, PhD, and 17 colleagues at Cincinnati Children's and Nantes Université, addresses a central bottleneck in organoid science: how to move from small lab models to larger, reproducible tissues with features needed for translational work.

这项研究由霍莉·波林博士领导，马克斯·马赫博士为资深作者，辛辛那提儿童医院和南特大学的17位同事共同参与，解决了类器官科学中的一个核心瓶颈问题：如何从小型实验室模型发展为具备转化工作所需特征的更大、可重复的组织。

The authors report that the platform produced centimeter-scale organoids nearly 10 times larger than those generated by standard methods..

作者报告说，该平台产生的厘米级类器官比标准方法生成的类器官大约大了近10倍。

Importantly, the organoids developed an enteric nervous system without the added complexity of separately introducing nerve cells. That result could matter for disease modeling because neuromuscular function is essential to how the gastrointestinal tract moves, senses and responds to injury and drugs.

重要的是，这些类器官在没有额外引入神经细胞的情况下发育出了肠神经系统。这一结果对于疾病建模可能很重要，因为神经肌肉功能对胃肠道的运动、感知以及对损伤和药物的反应至关重要。

The study shows that the transplanted tissues have neuromuscular activity resembling native human tissue..

研究表明，移植的组织具有类似于天然人体组织的神经肌肉活动。

'By reaching transplantation maturity twice as fast and developing their own functional nerves, these organoids demonstrate how engineering principles can drive biological innovation,' Poling says. 'Our confined culture system is more than a production method; it's a scalable, flexible platform for building complex human tissues.'.

“通过使移植成熟速度加快一倍并发展出自己的功能性神经，这些类器官展示了工程原理如何推动生物创新，”波林说。“我们的受限培养系统不仅仅是一种生产方法；它是一个可扩展、灵活的构建复杂人体组织的平台。”

Mahe says the system offers a more defined growth environment that allows the cells' intrinsic self-organization to generate tissue structures that more closely resemble the human gastrointestinal tract. This work also reflects a broader trend in regenerative medicine: combining stem-cell biology with engineered culture environments to improve reproducibility, scale and function..

马赫表示，该系统提供了一个更加明确的生长环境，让细胞的内在自我组织能力生成更接近人类胃肠道的组织结构。这项工作还反映了再生医学的一个更广泛趋势：将干细胞生物学与工程培养环境相结合，以提高可重复性、规模和功能。

Jim Wells, PhD

吉姆·威尔斯，博士

, a study co-author and chief scientific director at CuSTOM says the new technology overcomes key barriers to scale and function in organoid research and biomanufacturing.

CuSTOM的联合作者兼首席科学总监表示，这项新技术克服了类器官研究和生物制造中的关键规模和功能障碍。

'This platform's simplicity, reproducibility, and versatility make it accessible for widespread adoption,' Wells says. 'In addition, the emergence of a self-organized nervous system within these organoids is particularly important for further studies of neurodevelopmental disorders.'

“这个平台的简单性、可重复性和多功能性使其易于广泛采用，”威尔斯说。“此外，这些类器官内自组织神经系统的出现，对于进一步研究神经发育障碍尤为重要。”

The work remains preclinical, and the authors caution that full-sized replacement organs are still out of reach. But the advance could strengthen three fast-moving areas of research: disease modeling, drug safety testing and regenerative medicine. By producing larger and more standardized tissues more quickly, the method may help labs generate organoids that are more practical for mechanistic studies and for evaluating transplantation strategies..

这项工作仍处于临床前阶段，作者警告说，全尺寸的替代器官仍然遥不可及。但是这一进展可以推动三个快速发展的研究领域：疾病建模、药物安全性测试和再生医学。通过更快地生成更大且更标准化的组织，该方法可以帮助实验室生成更实用的类器官，用于机制研究和评估移植策略。

Michael Helmrath, MD

迈克尔·赫尔姆拉特，医学博士

, co-director of CuSTOM and a co-author, said additional development will be needed before CCS-derived tissues are ready for human trials. If the approach continues to perform well, organoid-based therapies could eventually reduce the need for full-organ transplantation in some gastrointestinal disorders..

CuSTOM联合主任兼共同作者表示，CCS衍生组织在进行人体试验之前还需要进一步的开发。如果这种方法继续表现良好，基于类器官的疗法最终可能减少某些胃肠道疾病对全器官移植的需求。

'We believe such tissues, once transplanted, would further grow and multiply as part of the patient's own organ to restore functions,' he says.

“我们认为，此类组织一旦移植，会作为患者自身器官的一部分进一步生长和增殖，从而恢复功能，”他说道。

About the study

关于这项研究

In addition to Poling, Mahe, Wells and Helmrath, the paper includes co-authors from Cincinnati Children's, Inserm and Nantes Université. Funding came from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche.

除了波林、马赫、威尔斯和赫尔姆拉特，论文的合著者还包括来自辛辛那提儿童医院、法国国家健康与医学研究院 (Inserm) 和南特大学的研究人员。研究资金来自美国国家糖尿病、消化和肾脏疾病研究所及法国国家研究局。

Publication Information

出版信息

Original title:

原题：

Large-scale and innervated functional human gut tissues for transplantation via transient spheroid confinement

通过瞬时球体约束实现大规模且有神经支配的功能性人类肠道组织移植

Published in:

发布于：

Nature Biomedical Engineering

自然生物医学工程

Publish date:

发布日期：

May 22, 2026

2026年5月22日

Read the study

阅读这项研究

SOURCE Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center

来源：辛辛那提儿童医院医疗中心

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