South Korean scientists have succeeded in growing a set of bat organoids, or mini-organs grown in a laboratory from bat cells, potentially opening up new ways to study how bats’ immune systems respond to viruses. 

A team of scientists from the Daejeon-based Institute for Basic Science announced the latest achievement Friday, saying it could prove useful in future research on pandemics. 

According to the institute, the organoids came from four kinds of tissue from five bat species and could facilitate research on zoonotic respiratory, kidney and intestinal viruses.

Zoonotic viruses are capable of crossing over from animals to humans and vice versa, and bats carry many such viruses, but until now scientists were limited in their ability to study how different kinds of bats responded to different viruses. 

The results of the South Korean study were published in the international journal Science.