{"id":6669,"date":"2020-11-17T13:54:47","date_gmt":"2020-11-17T19:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vetmed.iastate.edu\/article-v2\/how-artificial-dog-intestines-grown-by-cvm-researchers-could-accelerate-drug-tests-save-billions\/"},"modified":"2020-11-17T13:54:47","modified_gmt":"2020-11-17T19:54:47","slug":"how-artificial-dog-intestines-grown-by-cvm-researchers-could-accelerate-drug-tests-save-billions","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/vetmed.iastate.edu\/article\/how-artificial-dog-intestines-grown-by-cvm-researchers-could-accelerate-drug-tests-save-billions\/","title":{"rendered":"How Artificial Dog Intestines Grown by CVM Researchers Could Accelerate Drug Tests, Save Billions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<div\n\tclass=\"paragraph-widget paragraph-widget--text-html\">\n\t<div class=\"text-content\">\n\t\t<p><em>Courtesy of the Des Moines Register<\/em><br \/>\n\tIn&nbsp;a tiny cup in a cramped, concrete block office, a&nbsp;billion-dollar idea sits,&nbsp;small enough to fit about 2,000 of itself across the head of a penny.<\/p>\n<p>Iowa State University researchers Jonathan Mochel and Karin Allenspach-Jorn have examined these cups through a microscope for four years, watching stem cells grow into dog small intestines. Their goal? Create a faster way for pharmaceutical companies to determine whether a new drug will work.<\/p>\n<p>Mochel and&nbsp;Allenspach-Jorn&#8217;s team drops drugs into the tiny organs to measure how much will seep through. In theory, they can show how much of a drug will flow into a patient&#8217;s bloodstream. If not enough of the substance emerges&nbsp;\u2014 or too much of it does&nbsp;\u2014 the drugmaker knows the new product doesn&#8217;t work.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<aside aria-label=\"advertisement\">\n<p>The researchers believe the dog guts&nbsp;can save companies several years of development on a faulty drug, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars. Researchers&nbsp;can instead focus more attention on drugs that have a good chance to work.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s like poker,&#8221; Mochel said. &#8220;You want to kill the seven and the two and the eight and the three and only keep the jacks and the kings and the queens.&#8221;<\/p>\n<aside aria-label=\"advertisement\">\n<p>To commercialize their research, Mochel and&nbsp;Allenspach-Jorn formed a company, 3D Health Solutions, two years ago. Their work has intrigued some state leaders who believe the company can grow into a large operation.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>The Iowa Economic Development Authority awarded the company a $25,000 Proof of Commercial Relevance loan in July. 3D Health Solutions then won the 2020 John Pappajohn&nbsp;Iowa Entrepreneurial Venture Competition last month, landing another $40,000. The Iowa Innovation Corp.&nbsp;has also awarded them a $50,000 grant.<\/p>\n<p>Michael Roof, a 3D Health Solutions board member and the chief technology officer for vaccines and immunotherapeutics research at Iowa State, said the company&#8217;s work appeals to both human and veterinarian drug manufacturers.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In particular,&nbsp;Allenspach-Jorn said, companies can use&nbsp;the small intestines to test human drugs for&nbsp;Alzheimer&#8217;s,&nbsp;Crohn&#8217;s disease and colon cancer. The stomachs of&nbsp;dogs with those ailments are similar to those&nbsp;of humans, possibly because humans have raised and fed dogs in captivity for centuries.<\/p>\n<p>Before testing drugs on rodents, dogs or humans, pharmaceutical companies often try the drugs on&nbsp;cells derived from cancer patients, known as&nbsp;Caco-2 cells. Companies will test how much of the drug seeps through, similar to what the Iowa State team is doing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But Mochel and&nbsp;Allenspach-Jorn said the&nbsp;Caco-2 cells are not similar to small intestines, making them a bad way to test a drug&#8217;s performance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt doesn\u2019t actually work at all, and everybody&nbsp;knows it,&#8221; said Allenspach-Jorn, a professor of translational health and small animal medicine. &#8220;You do&nbsp;all of&nbsp;these&nbsp;tests, and&nbsp;you know&nbsp;it\u2019s completely useless.&nbsp;But you still submit it to the FDA so you can show you\u2019ve done it before you go into animals.&nbsp;It\u2019s not useful.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Companies spend about $2.6 billion researching a drug before it reaches customers, according to the Journal of Health Economics. Only about 12% of drugs that companies research actually go to market.<\/p>\n<p>Testing a drug&#8217;s performance on a tiny organ in a lab will allow companies to detect problems before they begin testing on live animals, Roof said. Many times, pharmaceutical companies research a drug on animals for three years before identifying a problem that the 3D Health Solutions team believes it can spot in the lab.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<aside aria-label=\"advertisement\">\n<p>Roof does not know of any other researchers measuring drugs with dog small intestines&nbsp;grown through stem cells.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re kind of in a unique space,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Mochel and&nbsp;Allenspach-Jorn are currently conducting a proof of concept study, with $250,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation, to further research their organoids, which are artificially grown masses of cells or tissue that resemble&nbsp;an organ. To show that their small intestines act like that of humans, they are dropping already developed drugs into the&nbsp;organoids and monitoring how much of the drug seeps through.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers record the amount that emerges and compare&nbsp;the figures to what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration already knows about those compounds.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If the results are promising,&nbsp;Mochel and&nbsp;Allenspach-Jorn will apply for a second National Science Foundation grant in March, this one for $1 million. They will test the small intestines against more drugs.<\/p>\n<p>Mochel said there is a &#8220;50-50&#8221; chance that the National Science Foundation will approve their application for the second phase. He said&nbsp;the organization ranked their previous grant proposal first among 730 applications it received across the country.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Still, he believes the research will take years&nbsp;\u2014 if not decades&nbsp;\u2014 before big pharmaceutical companies begin using the small intestines to test their new drugs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re not making any&nbsp;money and probably won&#8217;t for a while,&#8221;&nbsp;Allenspach-Jorn said. &#8220;But if we can get to the point where someone can acquire the business and make it into something bigger, I think it will be real nice.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The process begins at the&nbsp;Hixson-Lied Small Animal Hospital on Iowa State&#8217;s campus, where Allenspach-Jorn collects stem cells from some dog patients, with their owners&#8217; permission.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers grow the stem cells in tiny cultures that look like clear, plastic, thumb-sized cups. As they&nbsp;grow&nbsp;into an organ, the stem cells birth other &#8220;daughter&#8221; cells. The researchers drop in &#8220;growth factors,&#8221; proteins that instruct the cells to become larger and develop&nbsp;functions \u2014 producing mucus and hormones and absorbing whatever enters the small intestine.<\/p>\n<aside aria-label=\"advertisement\">\n<p>After about a week, the organoids are big enough to absorb&nbsp;drugs.&nbsp;The researchers place a small intestine on&nbsp;a sticky surface. The organ continues to grow. But, glued to the surface, the organs&nbsp;can&#8217;t stretch wider horizontally. Instead, the top of the small intestine opens up and grows out, like a blooming flower.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Researchers can now see the insides of the organ. They are looking at the part of a body where a drug rests after a patient swallows it, the medication freed from the capsules that dissolved in stomach acid on the way down.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers drop a test drug and solution into&nbsp;the test organ. Then, they wait. A receptor cup, seated&nbsp;under the sticky surface that holds the small intestine, will catch the drugs as they seep through. This tells researchers how the small intestine performed.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Then, they experiment again. About 100 times so far this year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We can save dogs from going through this,&#8221;&nbsp;Allenspach-Jorn said. &#8220;And save the biopharmaceutical industry a lot of money.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<!-- <div>From <a href='https:\/\/vetmed.iastate.edu\/article\/how-artificial-dog-intestines-grown-cvm-researchers-could-accelerate-drug-tests-save-billions'>https:\/\/vetmed.iastate.edu\/article\/how-artificial-dog-intestines-grown-cvm-researchers-could-accelerate-drug-tests-save-billions<\/a><\/div> -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6669","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":{"site_sections":["Research","VCS","VETMED"]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How Artificial Dog Intestines Grown by CVM Researchers Could Accelerate Drug Tests, Save Billions - 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