Organoid Engineering for Human Physiology and Drug Evaluation

Organoid technologies have advanced disease modeling and drug screening. We have established a suite of organoid and epithelial culture systems spanning intestinal, gastric, colorectal, lung, and multi-organ platforms.  For translational applications, we optimized colorectal and gastric cancer organoid models that retain tumor features and predict patient drug responses.  More recently, we integrated intestinal, liver, and tumor organoids into a fluidic multi-organoid system that recapitulates drug absorption and metabolism, revealing metabolism-dependent drug efficacy and toxicity not observed in single-organoid models. The intestine–liver–tumor system maintains cell viability, enhances differentiation and metabolic capacity, and closely recapitulates transcriptional features of native tissues. With gravity-driven flow and multi-organ interactions, these platforms recapitulate key aspects of drug absorption and metabolism, providing a basis for accurate evaluation of metabolism-dependent drugs and advancing precision medicine.

Ye-Guang Chen, professor of Nanchang University, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He primarily focuses on using molecular biology, cell biology, bioinformatics and other multidisciplinary means, through organoid technology and animal models to explore self-renewal and differentiation mechanisms of adult stem cells, and explore signal regulation molecular mechanism of cell fate and the mechanism of cancer disease development. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal Cell Regeneration and editorial board member of Cell Research, Open Biology, J Cell Mol Med, Cell Discovery, Cancer Science and other journals. He also holds positions as President of Nanchang University, Vice President of the International Federation for Cell Biology (IFCB) and President of the Asia-Pacific Organization for Cell Biology (APOCB).