OKANO HIDEYUKI

Stem Cell Biology &
Cell Based Medicine Area Leader

Practical use of small organ “organoids” to support research on drug discovery and disease mechanisms

Using the self-organizing ability of stem cells, we are creating small organs: organoids” that are the primordia of organs in petri dishes. These organoids will be useful for clarifying the mechanism of diseases and drug discovery.

There are several kinds of organoids such as intestinal organoids, but we are starting from brain organoids derived from iPS cells.

Current organoid technology is considered as craftsmanship work, which is difficult for industrialization. We are working on creating a system with good reproducibility. The system provides that you will obtain the same results no matter how many times you try or no matter who does.

It is said that we should reduce the number of animal experiments.. Of course, there are ethical problems to take biomaterial samples directly from human living tissues/organs for research use. It is significant to make biomaterials similar to living organs in a petri dish. Organoids are organs with three-dimensional structures. Cellular Information such as cellular-cellular interaction, organ building and gene function in organs are not easy to be obtained by analysis of two-dimensional culture. In contrast, three dimensional structures can provide detailed information on these subjects. Three-dimensional structure analysis can also increase success rate of drug discovery because we will obtain important information, such as how the medicine delivering to the organ and whether it working as we expected or not.

One of the key points is how to make bioreactors (devices that support biochemical reactions) to promote the self-organizing ability of stem cells, but it is the research that universities cannot do on their own. I believe that we can optimize the biological conditions suitable for organoids by applying the various JSR Corporation technologies.

The Keio University School of Medicine has excellent stem cell technology and JSR Corporation is strong in peripheral technologies such as the basic technologies for cultivation. This collaboration aims to provide easier drug discovery by using origanoids.