Intero Raises $2.3M to Sell Lab-Grown Mini-Guts for Drug Testing
Intero Biosystems has raised a $2.3 million pre-seed round to commercialize human intestinal organoids for preclinical testing. The Denver-based company spun out of the University of Michigan in 2024. Co-founder Charlie Childs is CEO and co-founder Madeline Eiken is CTO. TechCrunch
Its flagship product is GastroScreen, a human intestinal organoid model sold to pharmaceutical, biotech, food and chemical companies for testing drugs and other compounds. An organoid is a small, three-dimensional cluster grown from stem cells that mimics some functions of a full organ. The model is intended as an alternative to animal testing. Customers can buy the organoids directly, buy supporting reagents, or hire Intero to run studies.
Each organoid is about one millimeter across. Intero ships roughly 100 organoids at a time in a tube. The organoids contain multiple cell and tissue types found in the human intestine. The company also sells nutrient mixes and chemicals for growing and working with its organoids.
For customers that do not run the assays in-house, Intero designs custom experiments, performs the lab tests and delivers the resulting data. An assay is simply a standardized lab test. That services component sits alongside product sales. The company has seven employees.
Commercial traction is early. Intero has just under 10 customers. It generated more than $400,000 in revenue from the fourth quarter of last year through the third quarter of this year, as reported in October 2026.
The regulatory environment has shifted in favor of such methods. In April 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration laid out plans to reduce reliance on animal testing in drug development. It promoted alternatives including organoids, organs-on-chips and AI-based computational models. The agency announced a plan to phase out the animal testing requirement for monoclonal antibodies and other drugs. FDA
The FDA has promoted lab-grown human organoids and organ-on-a-chip systems that mimic human organs such as liver and heart. It published a roadmap outlining a stepwise approach to reduce animal testing in preclinical safety studies. In March 2026, the FDA issued draft guidance outlining how drug developers should validate new approach methodologies, or NAMs, the regulatory term for non-animal methods, for regulatory submissions. In September 2026, the FDA updated regulations to support wider use of innovative alternatives to animal testing while maintaining existing safety standards for human drug development.
Intero describes itself as a biotechnology company developing adult human stem cell-derived intestinal organoid platforms for drug discovery. It published a press release dated June 11, 2025, on its website at interobiosystems.com. The company states it has developed the first adult stem cell-derived human miniature intestine organoid that replicates key cell types.
In my view, the central issue for toxicology and pharmacology groups is validation. NAMs can cover organoids, organs-on-chips and computer models, but acceptance depends on defined contexts of use, reproducibility across sites and concordance with human outcomes. A one-millimeter multicellular gut model can be useful for permeability, metabolism and toxicity screening, which measure how a drug passes through, is broken down by and harms gut tissue. It still needs standardized culture media, handling protocols and readouts before a pharma team can replace an established animal assay. Intero's mix of organoids plus nutrient mixes and hands-on study work fits that gap, and starting with the gut is practical given oral dosing and GI toxicity. What this could enable is earlier, more human-relevant safety data without adding animal studies.
