Gastrointestinal tissue ‘can be grown into cells for tailor-made therapies’

Scientists in the US have developed a new method of growing human cells from tissue removed from a patient's gastrointestinal tract.

Developed by the Washington University School of Medicine, the method involved adapting a system used to grow intestinal epithelial stem cells in mice, allowing cell lines from individual patients to be produced in as little as two weeks.

It is thought that these cell lines could be used to help understand underlying problems in the gastrointestinal tracts of individual patients and be used to test new treatments for inflammatory bowel disease and other gastrointestinal conditions.

Moreover, the new technique is relatively simple and inexpensive, meaning it could easily be adapted for use in other laboratories.

Co-senior investigator Dr Thaddeus Stappenbeck said: "You can grow these cells, differentiate them and then test various therapies using these cells. If we want to learn whether particular patients have a susceptibility to certain types of infections, we can test that."

This will aid efforts to expand the usage of personalised medicine techniques, which involved providing patients with therapies tailored to their individual genetic characteristics and disease profile.