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Modeling gastric intestinal metaplasia in 3D organoids using nitrosoguanidine
Yuan Li1,2,3,† , Jiena Chen4,† , Tao Li2 , Jie Lin2 , Haocheng Zheng4 , Nadia Johnson4 , Xuebiao Yao5,* , Xia Ding2,3,4,*
1National Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine Constitution and Preventive Treatment of Diseases, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing 100029, China
2School of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing 100029, China
3Research Center for Spleen and Stomach Diseases of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing 100029, China
4Dongzhimen Hospital, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing 100700, China
5MOE Key Laboratory of Cellular Dynamics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230027, China
These authors contributed equally to this work
*Correspondence to:Xia Ding , Email:dingx@bucm.edu.cn Xuebiao Yao , Email:yaoxb@ustc.edu.cn
J Mol Cell Biol, Volume 16, Issue 7, July 2024, mjae030,  https://doi.org/10.1093/jmcb/mjae030

Gastric intestinal metaplasia (GIM) represents a precancerous stage characterized by morphological and pathophysiological changes in the gastric mucosa, where gastric epithelial cells transform into a phenotype resembling that of intestinal cells. Previous studies have demonstrated that the intragastric administration of N-methyl-N′-nitro-N-nitrosoguanidine (MNNG) induces both gastric carcinoma and intestinal metaplasia in mice. Here, we show that MNNG induces GIM in three-dimensional (3D) mouse organoids. Our histological analyses reveal that MNNG-induced gastric organoids undergo classical morphological alterations, exhibiting a distinct up-regulation of CDX2 and MUC2, along with a down-regulation of ATP4B and MUC6. Importantly, metaplastic cells observed in MNNG-treated organoids originate from MIST1+ cells, indicating their gastric chief cell lineage. Functional analyses show that activation of the RAS signaling pathway drives MNNG-induced metaplasia in 3D organoids, mirroring the characteristics observed in human GIM. Consequently, modeling intestinal metaplasia using 3D organoids offers valuable insights into the molecular mechanisms and spatiotemporal dynamics of the gastric epithelial lineage during the development of intestinal metaplasia within the gastric mucosa. We conclude that the MNNG-induced metaplasia model utilizing 3D organoids provides a robust platform for developing preventive and therapeutic strategies to mitigate the risk of gastric cancer before precancerous lesions occur.