Organoids and COVID-19 research

The world is facing one of its most absorbing health challenges in modern times. There´s a pandemic crisis and all efforts are now directed to find an effective treatment for COVID-19, or at least, a vaccine that can prevent the devastating effects of the virus spreading. Scientists all over the world are running against the clock to find answers, in a global effort never experienced by the scientific community. All of a sudden, we are willing to share data, results, thoughts and failures, focused on one final goal. What role can organoids play in this biomedical research race?

One of the main difficulties for COVID-19 research is the fact that we do not have an animal disease model. This coronavirus may be related to the one found in Asian bats (which are not used for laboratory research), but the pathology of the infection in bats is very different from the one occurring in humans. In this circumstance, in vitro, in silico and organoid models can play a key role as high-throughput screening methods. They have proved to be effective, safe and human-relevant, when compared to animal testing. During the last 20 years, animal-free methods have developed exponentially, thanks to EU-funded projects under IMI that can be successfully used in predicting toxicity of potential COVID-19 vaccines. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has formed an expert group for orientation on the use of non-animal approaches for accelerated drug development.  For example, human reconstituted airway epithelial models of nasal or bronchial origin have recently been reported to allow for the characterization of the viral infection kinetics by SARS-CoV-2.

Organoids are among the most striking examples of effective models for COVID-19 research. In fact, various human cell-based organoids are now available to test the virus infectivity and the biological routes regulating them. In May this year, the lab of Hans Clevers (the “father” of the organoid technology) reported that human small intestinal organoids were effectively used for SARS-CoV-2 replication, thus serving as experimental model for coronavirus infection and biology. Following this study, a Chinese group was able to establish the first organoid culture system of a bat intestinal epithelium, presenting evidence that SARS-CoV-2 can infect bat intestinal cells.

These models will open new routes of research, either by engineering lung organoids, by employing the technology to bats or using human cells. In REMODEL, we are of course very excited about these new outcomes, and we will continue to pay attention to and report on organoid work that can provide us an answer to fight the new infection effectively.