Studying Food Safety Without Animal Testing: FWF Grant for Georg Busslinger
CeMM Adjunct PI Georg Busslinger.
© Bubu Dujmic / CeMM.
Georg Busslinger, Adjunct Principal Investigator at CeMM, has received a competitive grant from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) to develop human organoid-based models for studying food-related host responses and food–drug interactions.
The project focuses on so-called human gastrointestinal organoids, miniature lab-grown models of the gut made from human cells. These organoids closely mimic the structure and function of the human digestive system and allow researchers to study how food additives, nutrients, and drugs interact with human tissue in ways that animal models cannot fully capture.
Using these models, the project will investigate how commonly used food additives affect gut cells, whether combinations of additives can have unexpected effects, and how substances derived from food influence the absorption of medicines, including chemotherapy drugs. The approach enables systematic testing directly in human tissue models, offering more relevant insights into human health while supporting animal-free research.
Funded under the FWF’s 3R program (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement of animal experiments), the project contributes to CeMM’s efforts to advance innovative, human-centered biomedical research and to develop more predictive and ethical experimental systems.
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Funding: This research was funded in whole or in part by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the Federal Ministry of Women, Science and Research (BMFWF) 10.55776/PAT3042325.
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