Lab-grown bat organs, next stop on the road to predicting pandemics Premium

Discover how lab-grown bat organoids and cell lines are revolutionizing virus research and pandemic preparedness worldwide.

Bats are important animals that help maintain ecosystem balance and human well-being. They play key roles like pollinating plants, dispersing seeds, and controlling insect populations. But of late they have become popular for a different reason: their unique ability to harbour viruses without succumbing to disease.

SARS, MERS, Ebola, COVID-19 — some of the most devastating human diseases of the past century are believed to have originated in bats. Despite their central role in pandemic ecology, we know surprisingly little about how viruses interact with bat biology, or why some viruses remain harmless in bats but become deadly when they jump to humans.

Studying bats has numerous challenges. They are nocturnal, elusive, and in many regions protected by law. Another challenge is a lack of suitable research tools and animal models. Traditional laboratory animals like mice or monkeys fail to replicate the unique physiological traits of bats and primary bat cells are notoriously hard to grow in culture.

Even cell lines derived from the same bat species that hosted a virus may not support its replication due to the loss of key host receptor expression.

In a study recently published in Science, an international team of researchers has developed the world’s most comprehensive platform of bat organoids: small, three-dimensional lab-grown tissues that replicate the structure and function of real bat organs. Organoids have long been developed and used for human biomedical research — and they are now being applied to bats.

Previous attempts at creating bat organoids were limited to a single fruit bat species and one organ type. These models failed to capture the full diversity of bat species, especially those found in temperate regions like East Asia, where many emerging viruses have been identified.

To address this, the team created organoids from five insect-eating bat species native to Asia and Europe. These included models of the trachea, lungs, kidneys, and intestines. These structures mimic the real tissues closely, with features like mucus-producing goblet cells and gas-exchanging alveoli.