Professor Ki-seok Yang (Department of Biotechnology) and graduate student Ji-soo Kim (Department of Biological and Nano-Bioengineering)

The research team led by Professor Ki-seok Yang at the Stem Cell and Regenerative Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, Department of Biotechnology, Incheon National University, has developed a stem cell-based multi-organoid culture platform. This study was published in Theranostics (Impact Factor 13.3, top 3.3% in JCR) under the title, “A convective transport–enhanced multi–organoid device for therapeutic modeling of the liver–pancreas axis in obesity.”

(Corresponding author: Prof. Ki-seok Yang; First author: Ji-soo Kim, M.S. Candidate, 4th semester)

In this study, the team successfully implemented a multi-organoid device (MOD) that integrates liver and pancreatic organoids derived from stem cells, enabling a precise simulation of the pathological interplay between metabolic dysfunction–associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) caused by obesity.

Notably, this platform features a stem cell-based 3D culture system that induces active convective flow of metabolic substances, facilitating directional exchange between tissues—thereby overcoming the limitations of traditional diffusion-based models.

Through this approach, the liver and pancreatic organoids maintained their physiological functions while actively interacting with each other. As a result, insulin and albumin secretion significantly increased, and the system successfully reproduced a physiological blood glucose recovery response within two hours following hyperglycemic stimulation, demonstrating strong correlation with in vivo metabolic responses.

This paper was recognized for its outstanding research excellence, being selected as the cover article of the journal and also featured in “People Who Brighten Korea.”