Development of a High-Throughput Screening Platform and a Pathogenesis Model for Leishmania Infection Based on Mouse Hepatic Organoids

The development of new alternative models is essential to overcome the limitations of traditional two-dimensional (2D) cell cultures and animal models. Three-dimensional (3D) models, such as organoids, better mimic the structural and functional complexity of mammalian organs, thereby reducing the ethical and economic issues related to animal experimentation. These systems provide more physiologically relevant environments, improving the accuracy of disease modeling and drug response prediction. In this context, we have developed mouse hepatic organoids from livers of adult BALB/c mice and characterized them by microscopy and transcriptional analysis. This model was applied to a robust and reproducible high-throughput screening (HTS) platform for testing cytotoxicity at the preclinical stage of drug discovery. In addition, mouse hepatic organoids were co-cultured with amastigotes of Leishmania donovani parasites to establish a model of host–parasite interaction, which was characterized by RNA-seq linked to differential expression analysis and cytokine production by the hepatic organoids. The findings provided in this work establish mouse hepatic organoids as an alternative model for drug discovery and pathogenesis studies.