Drug Screening, Oral Bioavailability and Regulatory Aspects: A Need for Human Organoids

The intestinal epithelium critically contributes to oral bioavailability of drugs by constituting an important site for drug absorption and metabolism. In particular, intestinal epithelial cells (IEC) actively serve as gatekeepers of drug and nutrient availability. IECs’ transport processes and metabolism are interrelated to the whole-body metabolic state and represent potential points of origin as well as therapeutic targets for a variety of diseases. Human intestinal organoids represent a superior model of the intestinal epithelium, overcoming limitations of currently used in vitro models. Caco-2 cells or rodent explant models face drawbacks such as their cancer and non-human origin, respectively, but are commonly used to study intestinal nutrient absorption, enterocyte metabolism and oral drug bioavailability, despite poorly correlative data. In contrast, intestinal organoids allow investigating distinct aspects of bioavailability including spatial resolution of transport, inter-individual differences and high-throughput screenings. As several countries have already developed strategic roadmaps to phase out animal experiments for regulatory purposes, intestinal organoid culture and organ-on-a-chip technology in combination with in silico approaches are roads to go in the preclinical and regulatory setup and will aid implementing the 3Rs (reduction, refinement and replacement) principle in basic science.