Through our research, we aim to explore how murine colonoids could be modified from a conventional colonoid culture system, to study certain aspects of intestinal physiology and their alteration in the presence of an inflamed disease state. Studying barrier function and intestinal physiology in disease states like inflammatory bowel disease is limited when using a traditional murine colonoid culture system that reflects only stem cell physiology. Our protocol is advantageous in that it provides the reader with multiple techniques to study how inflammatory mediators affect the intestinal epithelium, by either terminally differentiating them, or creating a 2D monolayer system.
In the future, our laboratory will concentrate on comprehending how the human colonoid culture system can be altered to investigate different aspects of intestinal physiology and diseases, particularly inflammatory bowel disease.