This organoid can menstruateand shows how tissue can repair itself

"Researchers have developed organoids that can regenerate like the endometrium, the lining of the uterus that sheds and re-forms during the menstrual cycle. The team used the miniature 3D structures to simulate rarely seen repair processes, which could inform future therapeutic strategies for tissue renewal and wound healing. The findings were published in Cell Stem Cell on 28 April."

"The endometrium has a unique ability to repair itself after menstrual shedding without scarring, but how it does this is a mystery. Until this study, it had been difficult to replicate the activity in the laboratory and studying it in people is too invasive, says co-author Konstantina Nikolakopoulou, a molecular biologist who did the research while at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland."

"It is fantastic to have a model system that you can do experiments on, says Deena Emera, an evolutionary biologist at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California. Insights about endometrium repair will not only help scientists to improve understanding of gynaecological diseases such as endometriosis, but also could be relevant to regeneration research in other tissues."

"For those models, the researchers took a biopsy from a person's endometrium, separated the cell types and mixed only the epithelial cells the main tissue type in the endometrium with a gelatinous membrane. This enabled the cells to self-organize into a hollow, spherical structure that acted like the endometrium."

Organoids were developed to regenerate similarly to the endometrium, the uterine lining that sheds and re-forms during the menstrual cycle. The miniature 3D structures simulate rarely observed repair processes that occur after menstrual shedding without scarring. Replicating endometrium repair in laboratory settings has been difficult, and studying it directly in people is too invasive. The organoids provide a model system for experiments that can clarify how endometrium repair works. Findings may improve understanding of gynecological diseases such as endometriosis and could support regeneration research in other tissues. The organoids were built by isolating epithelial cells from endometrial biopsies and allowing them to self-organize into hollow spherical structures on a gelatinous membrane.

Read at www.nature.com