Intero Biosystems develops mini human intestines for drug testing
Denver-based Intero Biosystems is creating lab-grown human intestinal organoids for drug research, aiming to reduce animal testing and improve the reliability of drug efficacy studies.
Denver-based startup Intero Biosystems is developing human intestinal organoids, lab-grown tissue models that mimic the gut, to study the effects of drugs and other compounds on the human body.
The company aims to provide drugmakers with an alternative to animal testing. Traditionally, animal models have been widely used in drug development, but inter-species differences can mean that substances effective in animals are not in humans. The organoids developed by Intero aim to more accurately simulate the structure and function of the human intestine.
According to Intero's founders, their models differ from previous, simpler gut models because they contain multiple cell and tissue types found in the human intestine. This makes them, in their view, a more human-relevant model for testing drugs and other compounds.
The company's flagship product, GastroScreen, is a human intestinal organoid model sold to the pharmaceutical, biotech, food, and chemical industries. The organoids are about one millimeter in size and can be used to study healthy intestinal models or to induce disease-like conditions to test tissue response to various compounds.