Developing a platform and optimized cell system for enteroendocrine cell-based assays and compound screening - The human intestine is a remarkable organ which stores 90% of the body’s important
neurotransmitter, serotonin, in enteroendocrine cells (EECs). Serotonin and other EECs-secreted
hormones play critical roles in regulating human feeding behavior and satiety, and their
dysregulation leads to overeating and a host of other diseases. For these reasons, there is a need
in the therapeutics marketplace for in vitro intestinal EECs platform that precisely recapitulates
the physiology of in vivo intestines. To meet this need, Altis Biosystems Inc., an early stage
biotechnology company, will collaborate with scientists at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill to develop a novel, primary-stem-cells-based, in vitro intestinal model (termed
RepliGut) that contains sufficient EECs for studying serotonin secretion. The platform will be
designed with the eventual goal during Phase II of creating systems for assaying a variety of
intestinal hormones in a high-content screening. The goal is to validate the RepliGut product
and bring this technology to therapeutics market. The collaboration represents an ideal
opportunity for the translation of an academic technology to the marketplace through the NIH
sponsored SBIR program. In this Phase I SBIR, this collaboration will optimize the RepliGut 96-
well platform for EECs cell lineage allocation, investigate cell variation, quantify serotonin
secretion, and validate the platform with a small-scale compound screen for serotonin.
