KAIST and KRIBB “Observed Regeneration in Damaged Areas Applied to Mice”
(Daejeon=Yonhap News) Reporter Park Joo-young = Professor Lim Seong-gab’s team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), in collaboration with Dr. Son Mi-young’s team at the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB), announced on the 12th that they have successfully cultured human intestinal stem cells in large quantities in a xenogeneic-free environment, completely excluding animal components.
Existing human organoid-derived intestinal stem cell culture techniques heavily depend on animal-derived materials, posing issues such as pathogen transmission. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval standards, clinical regenerative therapies must fundamentally exclude the use of animal-derived materials.
Worldwide, many studies are focused on chemically synthesizable xenogeneic-free culture platforms, but these efforts are limited by high costs and complex procedures.
The research team developed a culture and regenerative therapy platform using organic polymers deposited by vapor without animal-derived materials such as rat fibroblasts or Matrigel. This approach involved designing polymer screening optimized for culturing intestinal stem cells without animal-derived materials.
In vivo transplantation experiments of the cultured intestinal stem cells into the colon tissue of inflammatory mouse models with damaged intestinal epithelia showed regeneration of damaged areas and alleviation of inflammatory responses.
The team plans to assess the large-scale production capability of the platform and apply it to patient-derived stem cells.
Professor Lim stated, “We have demonstrated, for the first time globally, the feasibility of mass-culturing and transplanting human intestinal stem cells, significantly enhancing the reliability and productivity of stem cell therapies,” and added, “We plan to continue research evaluating the commercial viability of the platform and the clinical performance tailored to patients.”
This research outcome was published in the December 2nd issue of the international journal “Nature Communications.”