(ABC 6 News) – A new lab at Mayo Clinic is pioneering research to streamline treatment options for people with complex conditions by creating things called “organoids.”

Imagine if you could take one of your organs, like your small intestine, and create a million tiny versions of it.

These are organoids – microscopic spheres that can do every function of the organ they’re modeled after.

They’re made from stem cells taken from the inner lining of a person’s intestines and grown at the Stem Cell and Organoid Core at Mayo Clinic.

“In the middle of it, if you imagine taking a cross section of that globe, that would represent that tube-like structure of your intestine,” says Dr. Brooke Druliner.

Dr. Druliner is the Associate Director of the Core, and an assistant professor of medicine, biochemistry, and molecular biology at Mayo, leading organoid research to study potential treatment methods for people with inflammatory bowel disease, like Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis.

“At the end of the day, the front line treatment for both are biologics,” Druliner says. “Reducing the immune system such that  the gut can heal.”

What they also do is make a person immune-compromised, which is where organoids come in handy by essentially creating a miniature version of a person’s condition.

The organoids can be made from a single patient, then paired with cells from that same patient’s immune system.

The lab can then test the available drugs to see what might be most effective.

“Only about 40% of patients ever achieve sustained remission on the drugs that they currently use and so you’ve got a whole 60% of patients that are not going to respond to the only drugs that are available for this disease,” says Druliner.

The potential benefits of this research extends beyond treating just IBD.

“Imagine we have this renewable, modifiable, testable resource of a patient’s tissue and you can imagine other types of cells that we can begin to use to even more increase the system complexity.”

Other arms of this lab are investigating how organoids can be used to treat brain disorders, and further development could help create new treatments for an even wider variety of conditions like cancer, epilepsy, and even dementia.