Mini-organs grown for first time in lab

Scientists have created living replicas of the organs of individual unborn babies, a breakthrough that promises to shed light on one of the most poorly understood stages of human life.

The process involved collecting small samples of the amniotic fluid that surrounds a foetus in the womb.

Researchers from University College London and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children then analysed the cells found floating in the fluid to find ones that had been shed by the foetus.

In the laboratory, they were then able to coax these cells to grow into what are known as “organoids” – living, three-dimensional pieces of tissue that resemble parts of the unborn child’s lungs, kidneys and small intestine.

Studying these organoids could fill in important gaps in our understanding of how a pregnancy develops, and help to uncover the causes of inherited diseases and recurrent miscarriage.

Dr Mattia Gerli of University College London, who led the study, said organoids derived from an unborn baby could also be used to test whether treatments for inherited conditions were likely to work on the foetus itself.

Organoids are potentially powerful tools for investigating biological processes that would be impossible to study inside a living person. However, producing versions that mimic the human body during pregnancy has usually relied on taking cells from an aborted foetus, which has carried legal and ethical implications.

In the study, published in Nature Medicine, a lung organoid was grown from a foetus with a genetically inherited condition known as diaphragmatic hernia. This involves an abnormal opening in the diaphragm that allows organs from the belly to move into the chest to crush the lungs, which then do not develop as they should. The lung organoids appeared to display features linked to the condition, which is often fatal. – The Times