Honey, I shrunk the organs: How organoids are changing the face of research

What is your genie-in-a-bottle scientific wish? What is your scientific wish list? 

When I first started graduate school in the fall of 2023, I pondered these questions for a long time. For me, one of the first things that came to mind was wishing to shrink down to the size of a cell to explore the body’s organ systems firsthand. 

Imagine, in a twist of fate you find yourself stuck in a scene from Honey I Shrunk the Kids, shrunk down to the size of a single cell being able to observe first-hand, the miracle of the human body. Growing up watching science fiction as a kid prepared me to answer this question, but how do you separate the world of fantasy from tangible science?

For a long time, I’ve stored this wish away as pure imagination. An impossible feat. However, when I joined the Mindy Engevik lab at MUSC, this wish became possible—well sort of. 

"By using organoids, we can now further our knowledge on diseases that have “out-smarted, out-gamed and out-competed” us for years."

-- Anna Tingler

Now, I know what you guys are thinking: no Mindy does not have a shrink ray! But what if I told you we hold the power in our fingertips to create miniature organs and study them on complex levels? Pretty awesome right!

The technique I mentioned above is called generating “organoids.” Organoids are miniature versions of organs that have the ability to re-create the functionality and intricacy of complex processes in the human body. Organoids can bridge vast knowledge gaps in many research topics. For example, one of the main limitations of research projects is the lack of a scientist’s ability to mimic key biological systems. By using organoids, we can now further our knowledge on diseases that have “out-smarted, out-gamed and out-competed” us for years. 

We can generate organoid models of many organs, including the small intestine, the large intestine (colon), salivary glands, stomach and many more.  Although we have the capacity to create a large variety of organoids, we focus on creating small intestine and large intestine organoids to study our disease model.

In the Engevik lab, we tap into this capacity to generate organoids because it mimics physiological conditions of the body better than cell-culture. For instance, in our lab, we are interested in understanding pathogen interactions in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). IBD is an umbrella term that describes patients that have ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s Disease—diseases that affect either the colon or the small intestine.

One of the many characteristics of IBD includes alterations in gut microbiota creating an environment of more bad bacteria than good bacteria. As a lab we aim to study how pathogens interact with the gut to exacerbate disease. Our development of colon organoids has been crucial in understanding how Clostridioides difficile interacts with the gut epithelium and is pivotal in IBD severity and development. Thus, we use organoid models quite frequently to examine how the “organ” changes when exposed to different experimental conditions.

Organoids are shaping the future of science, one miniature organ at a time. As researchers, it is possible for us to play a role in shifting the impossible to the realm of the possible. Hold on tight to your “genie-in-a-bottle” scientific wish, never forget it. For one day, you may see it come true right before your very eyes, just like I did when I started my journey as a graduate student.