Organoids as a tool for understanding immune-mediated intestinal regeneration and development

The traditional view of immune cells is that their role within the body is to combat infections; however, it is becoming increasingly clear that they also perform tasks that are not classically associated with inflammation and pathogen clearance. These functions are executed deep within tissues, which are often poorly accessible and subject to environmental variability, especially in humans. Here, we discuss how multicellular 3D systems in a dish - organoids - are transitioning from a proof-of-principle approach to a timely, robust and reliable tool. Although we primarily focus on recent findings enabled by intestinal organoids co-cultured with lymphocytes, we posit that organoid coculture systems will support future efforts to disentangle the interactions between a plethora of different cell types throughout development, homeostasis, regeneration and disease.

Automated summary

The traditional view of immune cells as combatting infections is being challenged as they are found to have additional tasks beyond inflammation and pathogen clearance, such as deep tissue functions. Multicellular 3D systems, specifically organoids, are becoming a reliable tool to study the interactions between different cell types.