In healthy intestines, food is moved along the digestive tract through peristalsis — a series of wave-like contractions. Special nerve cells called ganglion cells are required for this movement, but there is also a rich mixture of other types of nerve cells.
In children with Hirschsprung’s disease, these cells are missing. Without them, the intestine becomes blocked and surgical removal of the affected segment of colon is required.
The scientists initially grew cells from patients with Hirschsprung’s disease and from mice with a genetic mutation that causes aganglionosis. In both cases, the tissue-engineered colon derived from these cells did not have the all-important components of the intestinal nervous system.
In a second set of experiments, again testing both mouse and human cells, the investigators added neurospheres, which are clusters of purified neural progenitor cells. The cells had been stained with green fluorescence, so the scientists could readily visualize where the nerve cells ended up in the tissue-engineered colon, as well as determine the source of the nerve cells.
“After growing the colon for four weeks, we saw that the green nerve cells had been incorporated into the colon engineered from human tissue derived from a patient lacking those elements and that the different nerve subtypes were present,” said first author on the study.
Edited
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