Mahe Maxime M, Sundaram Nambirajan, Watson Carey L, Shroyer Noah F, Helmrath Michael A
Department of Pediatric General and Thoracic Surgery, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.
Department of Medicine, Section of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Baylor College of Medicine.
J Vis Exp. 2015 Mar 6(97):52483. doi: 10.3791/52483.
The epithelium of the gastrointestinal tract is constantly renewed as it turns over. This process is triggered by the proliferation of intestinal stem cells (ISCs) and progeny that progressively migrate and differentiate toward the tip of the villi. These processes, essential for gastrointestinal homeostasis, have been extensively studied using multiple approaches. Ex vivo technologies, especially primary cell cultures have proven to be promising for understanding intestinal epithelial functions. A long-term primary culture system for mouse intestinal crypts has been established to generate 3-dimensional epithelial organoids. These epithelial structures contain crypt- and villus-like domains reminiscent of normal gut epithelium. Commonly, termed "enteroids" when derived from small intestine and "colonoids" when derived from colon, they are different from organoids that also contain mesenchyme tissue. Additionally, these enteroids/colonoids continuously produce all cell types found normally within the intestinal epithelium. This in vitro organ-like culture system is rapidly becoming the new gold standard for investigation of intestinal stem cell biology and epithelial cell physiology. This technology has been recently transferred to the study of human gut. The establishment of human derived epithelial enteroids and colonoids from small intestine and colon has been possible through the utilization of specific culture media that allow their growth and maintenance over time. Here, we describe a method to establish a small intestinal and colon crypt-derived system from human whole tissue or biopsies. We emphasize the culture modalities that are essential for the successful growth and maintenance of human enteroids and colonoids.
胃肠道上皮在不断更新换代。这个过程由肠干细胞(ISC)及其子代细胞的增殖触发,这些细胞逐渐迁移并向绒毛顶端分化。这些对胃肠道稳态至关重要的过程已通过多种方法进行了广泛研究。体外技术,尤其是原代细胞培养,已被证明在理解肠道上皮功能方面很有前景。一种用于小鼠肠隐窝的长期原代培养系统已被建立,以生成三维上皮类器官。这些上皮结构包含类似于正常肠上皮的隐窝样和绒毛样区域。通常,从小肠衍生而来的称为“肠类器官”,从结肠衍生而来的称为“结肠类器官”,它们与也包含间充质组织的类器官不同。此外,这些肠类器官/结肠类器官持续产生肠道上皮中正常存在的所有细胞类型。这种体外类器官样培养系统正迅速成为研究肠干细胞生物学和上皮细胞生理学的新金标准。这项技术最近已应用于人类肠道研究。通过使用特定的培养基,能够使人源上皮肠类器官和结肠类器官从小肠和结肠中生长并长期维持,从而实现了人源上皮肠类器官和结肠类器官的建立。在此,我们描述一种从人类全组织或活检样本中建立小肠和结肠隐窝衍生系统的方法。我们强调了对人源肠类器官和结肠类器官成功生长和维持至关重要的培养方式。