Organoids grown from amniotic fluid could shed light on rare diseases

Amazing stuff! This could be huge! A breakthrough?

"Cells taken from the fluid around growing fetuses have been used to make organoids, 3D bundles of cells that mimic tissue. These organoids could help researchers to understand diseases that develop in the fetus during pregnancy.

The researchers grew organoids from lung, kidney and small intestine cells shed into amniotic fluid collected from 12 pregnancies between the 16th and 34th weeks of gestation. This is the first time that organoids have been grown directly from cells taken from ongoing pregnancies ...

Around 13,000 children in the United Kingdom were born with at least one congenital anomaly in 2020, out of nearly 600,000 births. The authors hope that the organoids could one day provide information about how congenital conditions progress, and even be used to personalize treatment for individual fetuses in future. ..."

From the abstract:

"Isolation of tissue-specific fetal stem cells and derivation of primary organoids is limited to samples obtained from termination of pregnancies, hampering prenatal investigation of fetal development and congenital diseases. Therefore, new patient-specific in vitro models are needed. To this aim, isolation and expansion of fetal stem cells during pregnancy, without the need for tissue samples or reprogramming, would be advantageous. Amniotic fluid (AF) is a source of cells from multiple developing organs. Using single-cell analysis, we characterized the cellular identities present in human AF. We identified and isolated viable epithelial stem/progenitor cells of fetal gastrointestinal, renal and pulmonary origin. Upon culture, these cells formed clonal epithelial organoids, manifesting small intestine, kidney tubule and lung identity. AF organoids exhibit transcriptomic, protein expression and functional features of their tissue of origin. With relevance for prenatal disease modeling, we derived lung organoids from AF and tracheal fluid cells of congenital diaphragmatic hernia fetuses, recapitulating some features of the disease. AF organoids are derived in a timeline compatible with prenatal intervention, potentially allowing investigation of therapeutic tools and regenerative medicine strategies personalized to the fetus at clinically relevant developmental stages."

Organoids grown from amniotic fluid could shed light on rare diseases Organ-like groups of cells can be grown from amniotic fluid samples and offer hope for studying congenital conditions.

Single-cell guided prenatal derivation of primary fetal epithelial organoids from human amniotic and tracheal fluids (open access)

An kidney organoid made from amniotic cells

Fig. 1: Single-cell analysis of the AF content.

Fig. 3: Characterization and maturation of small intestine AFO.