3D Organoid Core

Your Partner in Discovery: Customized Organoids for Breakthrough Science

About the Core

The overall goal of the Baylor College of Medicine 3D Organoid Core is to develop state of the art advanced human tissue models and platforms for application to studies designed to improve current understanding of biology at epithelial surfaces. The core generates, maintains, and provides experimentally ready human donor tissue-derived organoid cultures customized for individual projects. In addition to providing developed models, the core is also focused on developing new tools, models, and platforms for the exploration of additional aspects of epithelial biology. Centralized services provided by the core control and minimize costs, ensure quality control, and allow novel biological insight to be sought by the user. The core allows for the optimization and customization of core reagents by the user in consideration of unique aspects of individual projects.
 

Unlock Advanced Research Capabilities with our 3D Organoid Core
 

  1. State-of-the-Art Organoid Models: Gain access to cutting-edge human ex vivo organoid models that serve as a crucial link between traditional animal models and clinical research, offering unparalleled relevance to human biology.
  2. Diverse and Inclusive Cohort: Our core offers a large collection of epithelial organoids, derived from human stem cells of donors with diverse demographic backgrounds. This diversity enhances the applicability and impact of your research findings.
  3. Experienced Team at Your Service: With over 13 years of expertise in organoid culturing, our experienced staff is available to support you at every stage—from experimental design to execution and data interpretation—ensuring you obtain high-quality data to propel your research forward.
  4. Centralized and Cost-Effective: By centralizing organoid activities within our core, we reduce your cost burden, decrease the time it takes to return data, and guarantee optimization and stringent quality control throughout your project.
  5. Tailored Scientific Collaboration: Your research questions are our priority. We offer personalized interactions where your scientific inquiries are seamlessly integrated into the use of our organoid models, ensuring a collaborative and effective research experience.
See services and fees

Director's Message

Sarah Blutt

As director of the BCM 3D Organoid Core, I am excited to help users integrate this technology into their research programs. Organoids are cost effective, high throughput, and provide a human model of epithelial surfaces. Technology such as human organoids has recently been recognized by the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 to represent an animal free alternative to develop biological products for human health and these models may have better predictive power than traditional animal models or transformed cell lines. My vision is to create human based platforms that can provide personalized medicine-based approaches to health care to improve clinical outcomes at the individual level. The mission of the core is to help users discover, develop, and implement organoid technology in their research programs studying human health and disease. I invite you to browse our website and imagine how organoid technology can transform your biological questions.

Publications

2024

Adeniyi-Ipadeola GO, Hankins JD, Kambal A, Zeng X-L, Patil K, Poplaski V, Bomidi C, Nguyen-Phuc H, Grimm SL, Coarfa C, Stossi F, Crawford SE, Blutt SE, Speer AL, Estes MK, Ramani S. Infant and adult human intestinal enteroids are morphologically and functionally distinct. mBio. 2024 Aug 14;15(8):e0131624. doi: 10.1128/mbio.01316-24. Epub 2024 Jul 2. PMID: 38953637; PMCID: PMC11323560.

2023

Poplaski V, Bomidi C, Kambal A, Nguyen-Phuc H, Di Rienzi SC, Danhof HA, Zeng XL, Feagins LA, Deng N, Vilar E, McAllister F, Coarfa C, Min S, Kim HJ, Shukla R, Britton R, Estes MK, Blutt SE. Human intestinal organoids from Cronkhite-Canada syndrome patients reveal link between serotonin and proliferation. J Clin Invest. 2023 Nov 1;133(21):e166884. doi: 10.1172/JCI166884. PMID: 37909332; PMCID: PMC10617781.

2021

Rajan A, Weaver AM, Aloisio GM, Jelinski J, Johnson HL, Venable SF, McBride T, Aideyan L, Piedra FA, Ye X, Melicoff-Portillo E, Yerramilli MRK, Zeng XL, Mancini MA, Stossi F, Maresso AW, Kotkar SA, Estes MK, Blutt S, Avadhanula V, Piedra PA. The Human Nose Organoid Respiratory Virus Model: an Ex Vivo Human Challenge Model To Study Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Pathogenesis and Evaluate Therapeutics. mBio. 2021 Feb 22;13(1):e0351121. doi: 10.1128/mbio.03511-21. Epub 2022 Feb 15. PMID: 35164569; PMCID: PMC8844923.

Criss ZK 2nd, Bhasin N, Di Rienzi SC, Rajan A, Deans-Fielder K, Swaminathan G, Kamyabi N, Zeng XL, Doddapaneni H, Menon VK, Chakravarti D, Estrella C, Yu X, Patil K, Petrosino JF, Fleet JC, Verzi MP, Christakos S, Helmrath MA, Arimura S, DePinho RA, Britton RA, Maresso AW, Grande-Allen KJ, Blutt SE, Crawford SE, Estes MK, Ramani S, Shroyer NF. Drivers of transcriptional variance in human intestinal epithelial organoids. Physiol Genomics. 2021 Nov 1;53(11):486-508. doi: 10.1152/physiolgenomics.00061.2021. Epub 2021 Oct 6. PMID: 34612061; PMCID: PMC8616596.

Blutt SE, Crawford SE, Bomidi C, Zeng XL, Broughman JR, Robertson M, Coarfa C, Tessier MEM, Savidge T, Hollinger FB, Curley SA, Donowitz M, Estes MK. Use of human tissue stem cell-derived organoid cultures to model enterohepatic circulation. Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol. 2021 Sep 1;321(3):G270-G279. doi: 10.1152/ajpgi.00177.2021. Epub 2021 Jul 21. PMID: 34288725; PMCID: PMC8461792.

Wilson RL, Swaminathan G, Ettayebi K, Bomidi C, Zeng XL, Blutt SE, Estes MK, Grande-Allen KJ. Protein-Functionalized Poly(ethylene glycol) Hydrogels as Scaffolds for Monolayer Organoid Culture. Tissue Eng Part C Methods. 2021 Jan;27(1):12-23. doi: 10.1089/ten.TEC.2020.0306. PMID: 33334213; PMCID: PMC7826425.

Hasan NM, Johnson KF, Yin J, Baetz NW, Fayad L, Sherman V, Blutt SE, Estes MK, Kumbhari V, Zachos NC, Kovbasnjuk O. Intestinal stem cell-derived enteroids from morbidly obese patients preserve obesity-related phenotypes: Elevated glucose absorption and gluconeogenesis. Mol Metab. 2021 Feb;44:101129. doi: 10.1016/j.molmet.2020.101129. Epub 2020 Nov 25. PMID: 33246140; PMCID: PMC7770968.

2020

In JG, Yin J, Atanga R, Doucet M, Cole RN, DeVine L, Donowitz M, Zachos NC, Blutt SE, Estes MK, Kovbasnjuk O. Epithelial WNT2B and Desert Hedgehog Are Necessary for Human Colonoid Regeneration after Bacterial Cytotoxin Injury. iScience. 2020 Sep 28;23(10):101618. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2020.101618. PMID: 33089106; PMCID: PMC7559866.

Rajan A, Robertson MJ, Carter HE, Poole NM, Clark JR, Green SI, Criss ZK, Zhao B, Karandikar U, Xing Y, Margalef-Català M, Jain N, Wilson RL, Bai F, Hyser JM, Petrosino J, Shroyer NF, Blutt SE, Coarfa C, Song X, Prasad BV, Amieva MR, Grande-Allen J, Estes MK, Okhuysen PC, Maresso AW. Enteroaggregative E. coli Adherence to Human Heparan Sulfate Proteoglycans Drives Segment and Host Specific Responses to Infection. PLoS Pathog. 2020 Sep 28;16(9):e1008851. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1008851. PMID: 32986782; PMCID: PMC7553275.

Chakravarti D, Hu B, Mao X, Rashid A, Li J, Li J, Liao WT, Whitley EM, Dey P, Hou P, LaBella KA, Chang A, Wang G, Spring DJ, Deng P, Zhao D, Liang X, Lan Z, Lin Y, Sarkar S, Terranova C, Deribe YL, Blutt SE, Okhuysen P, Zhang J, Vilar E, Nielsen OH, Dupont A, Younes M, Patel KR, Shroyer NF, Rai K, Estes MK, Wang YA, Bertuch AA, DePinho RA. Telomere dysfunction activates YAP1 to drive tissue inflammation. Nat Commun. 2020 Sep 21;11(1):4766. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-18420-w. PMID: 32958778; PMCID: PMC7505960.

2019

Fasciano AC, Blutt SE, Estes MK, Mecsas J. Induced Differentiation of M Cell-like Cells in Human Stem Cell-derived Ileal Enteroid Monolayers. J Vis Exp. 2019 Jul 26;(149):10.3791/59894. doi: 10.3791/59894. PMID: 31403623; PMCID: PMC6755909.
2017

Vernetti L, Gough A, Baetz N, Blutt S, Broughman JR, Brown JA, Foulke-Abel J, Hasan N, In J, Kelly E, Kovbasnjuk O, Repper J, Senutovitch N, Stabb J, Yeung C, Zachos NC, Donowitz M, Estes M, Himmelfarb J, Truskey G, Wikswo JP, Taylor DL. Functional Coupling of Human Microphysiology Systems: Intestine, Liver, Kidney Proximal Tubule, Blood-Brain Barrier and Skeletal Muscle. Sci Rep. 2017 Feb 8;7:42296. doi: 10.1038/srep42296. Erratum in: Sci Rep. 2017 Mar 16;7:44517. doi: 10.1038/srep44517. PMID: 28176881; PMCID: PMC5296733.

2016

Ettayebi K, Crawford SE, Murakami K, Broughman JR, Karandikar U, Tenge VR, Neill FH, Blutt SE, Zeng XL, Qu L, Kou B, Opekun AR, Burrin D, Graham DY, Ramani S, Atmar RL, Estes MK. Replication of human noroviruses in stem cell-derived human enteroids. Science. 2016 Sep 23;353(6306):1387-1393. doi: 10.1126/science.aaf5211. Epub 2016 Aug 25. PMID: 27562956; PMCID: PMC5305121. 

2015

Saxena K, Blutt SE, Ettayebi K, Zeng XL, Broughman JR, Crawford SE, Karandikar UC, Sastri NP, Conner ME, Opekun AR, Graham DY, Qureshi W, Sherman V, Foulke-Abel J, In J, Kovbasnjuk O, Zachos NC, Donowitz M, Estes MK. Human Intestinal Enteroids: a New Model To Study Human Rotavirus Infection, Host Restriction, and Pathophysiology. J Virol. 2015 Oct 7;90(1):43-56. doi: 10.1128/JVI.01930-15. PMID: 26446608; PMCID: PMC4702582.