Intero Biosystems ships mini gut organs for drug testing
Original: Intero Biosystems wants drugmakers to test on mini human intestines, not animals
Why This Matters
FDA's push to reduce animal testing opens a real commercial path for organoid platforms.
Denver startup Intero Biosystems sells human intestinal organoids to pharma and biotech firms as animal testing alternatives. Founded in 2024, it has 7 employees, ~10 customers, $2.3M pre-seed funding, and $400K+ revenue over the past year.
Intero Biosystems, a University of Michigan spinout now based in Denver, is selling lab-grown human intestinal organoids to pharmaceutical, biotech, food, and chemical companies looking for more human-relevant alternatives to animal models. Its flagship product, GastroScreen, consists of roughly one-millimeter organoids that contain multiple cell and tissue types found in the human intestine — a step up from simpler flat-cell models. The company ships about 100 at a time in a tube. Customers can use them as healthy gut models or induce disease-like conditions to observe tissue response. "We're literally shipping mini living organs in the mail to people," said co-founder and CEO Charlie Childs. Beyond organoids themselves, Intero sells cell culture supplies and runs full custom studies — designing experiments, running lab tests, and delivering data — primarily for drug safety and disease research. Co-founder and CTO Madeline Eiken framed the pitch plainly: "Most drugs fail clinical trials, and I think it's pretty easy to appreciate that we are neither mice nor flat layers of cells." The FDA's April 2025 announcement of plans to reduce reliance on animal testing has added regulatory tailwind. Founded in 2024, Intero has seven employees, just under 10 customers, a $2.3 million pre-seed round, and over $400,000 in revenue from Q4 2025 through Q3 2026.