Organoid culture to study epithelial cell differentiation and barrier formation in the colon: bridging the gap between monolayer cell culture and human subject research

Organoid culture provides a powerful technology that can bridge the gap between monolayer cell culture on the one hand and whole animal or human subject research on the other. Tissues from many different organs from multiple species, including human, have already been successfully adapted to organoid growth. While optimal culture conditions have not yet been established for all tissue types, it seems that most tissues will, ultimately, be amenable to this type of culture. The colon is one of the tissues in which organoid culture was first established as a technology and which has been most successfully employed. The ready availability of histologically normal tissue as well as both premalignant and malignant tissue (often from the same individual) makes this possible. While individual tumors are highly variable relative to one another in organoid culture, a high degree of genotypic consistency exists between the tumor tissue and the histologically normal counterpart from a given source. Further, source material and tumor tissue in organoid culture demonstrate a high degree of genotypic consistency. Even after 6-9 mo in continuous culture, drift in the mutational profile has been shown to be minimal. Colon tissue maintained in organoid culture, thus, provides a good surrogate for the tissue of origin-a surrogate, however, that is as amenable to intervention with molecular, pharmacological, and immunological approaches as are more-traditionally studied cell lines.