Designing a better way to study stomach flu.

• Position: Gastroenteritis

The bacteria and viruses that cause acute gastroenteritis often come from contaminated food or water and result in cramps, nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting. In medical terms, these pathogens fall under the heading of "human enteric disease" and, while they may be common, they also can be deadly. Diarrheal diseases still account for about 17% of worldwide human deaths each year, and they are the second-leading killer of children five and younger.

Bioengineers from Rice University are teaming with colleagues from two other Houston, Texas, institutions--Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center--to apply the latest techniques in tissue engineering toward the study of the stomach flu.

One roadblock to studying enteric pathogens like human rotaviruses and E. coli is that the organisms behave differently in humans than they do in the animals typically used in medical research. Stem cell research has fed to recent breakthroughs in the development of more realistic cell culture models, but there is room for improvement.

"Infectious-disease labs...