Intestinal organoids as tools for the investigation of foodborne viruses

Efficient infection models are crucial for the investigation of the properties of food-borne viruses. They enable both, detailed investigation of applied aspects like virus stability and inactivation, as well as assessment of basic virus characteristics such as host specificity, under laboratory conditions. Classical laboratory-based infection models use established cell lines that are grown as two-dimensional cultures and can be infected with different viruses. However, for many food-borne viruses, such as human norovirus, there are no classical cell lines that can efficiently propagate these viruses. In addition, the used cell lines sometimes do not exhibit the same properties as original cells from a natural host organism, due to their diverse genetic modifications. In recent years, great progress has been made in the generation of so-called organoids, which are differentiated from stem cells under laboratory conditions and kept three-dimensionally in culture. Although their production is sophisticated, they are very similar in structure to the corresponding organs and therefore represent excellent models. It has also been shown that human noroviruses can be propagated in intestinal organoids, which is currently the most promising way of studying these viruses. Therefore, in the project, different variants for the production of intestinal organoids from human and animal cells will be tested and compared to each other. Selected organoids will thereafter be infected with human norovirus in order to determine their suitability for assesement studies on the stability and inactivation of this virus. Finally, infection experiments with hepatitis E virus and rotavirus will clarify whether intestinal organoids are also suitable for investigation of these food-associated viruses.