Drug development has long relied on animal models, but differences between species mean what works in animals doesn’t always translate to humans, and most drugs still fail during development. Intero Biosystems, a Denver-based startup, is developing human intestinal organoids, lab-grown tissue that mimics the gut, as another way to study how drugs and other compounds might affect the human body before they are tested in people. Researchers and pharmaceutical companies are increasingly looking for models that better reflect human biology to supplement animal testing and reduce their reliance on it.

Intero, which spun out of the University of Michigan, says its organoids differ from simpler models that replicate only part of the gut. They contain multiple cell and tissue types found in the human intestine, which the company believes makes them a more human-relevant model for testing drugs and other compounds, co-founder and CTO Madeline Eiken told TechCrunch.

“Most drugs fail clinical trials, and I think it’s pretty easy to appreciate that we are neither mice nor flat layers of cells,” Eiken said.

The startup’s flagship product, GastroScreen, is a human intestinal organoid model that it sells to pharmaceutical, biotech, food, and chemical companies for testing drugs and other compounds. Each organoid is about one millimeter across, and the company ships roughly 100 at a time in a tube, co-founder and CEO Charlie Childs said. Customers can use them as healthy intestinal models or induce disease-like conditions to test how the tissue responds to different compounds.

“We’re literally shipping mini living organs in the mail to people,” Childs said.

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