Novel method for organoid production and storage to accelerate drug development research

Researchers develop method to produce organoid materials for disease and drug development research.

Organoids consist of individualized collections of cells derived from stem cells that resemble a patient’s own tissues. As a result, organoids can be utilized to replicate complex organ tissues and systems as a research tool for therapeutic and drug development. However, bottlenecks continue to persist in development of organoids for such research purposes. For example, one batch of starting material may yield a large quantity of organ precursor cells while another batch of starting material may yield little to none. Such inconsistencies can lead to pipeline delays for preclinical trials during drug development.

The research team at Cincinnati Children’s thus developed a method to overcome such inconsistencies in early-stage organoid formation. In a typical setting, organoid production begins with the collection of skin or blood cells, which are then converted to iPSCs utilized to grow a layer of precursor cells. Ideally, these early-stage organoids spontaneously form 3D balls of cells that are then collected and transferred to a growth medium that provides necessary conditions to grow a specific organ cell type. The novel method developed by the researchers instead places the unused precursor cells in a centrifuge which drive the cells into wells, prompting the formation of 3D cell aggregates. These are then collected and utilized for organoid production. Spheroids created with this method were demonstrated to have no significant difference than those grown spontaneously. Precursor cells were also placed into freezers for storage. Once thawed, the precursor cells continued to form viable spheroids. This method has made possible the mass production of organoids with increased consistency.

Amy Pitstick, manager of the Pluripotent Stem Cell Facility at Cincinnati Children’s, commented:

“This method can make organoids a more accessible tool…We show that the aggregation approach consistently produces high yields and we have proven that precursor cells can be thawed from cryogenic storage to produce organoids of the small intestine.”

Michael Helmrath, Director of Clinical Translation for the Center for Stem Cell & Organoid Medicine, added:

“This is a great step forward for the field on many fronts… To be able to reduce the complexity of the process and provide higher yields is beneficial to our work and to be able to translate the methods to other labs will help move regenerative medicine forward.”

Source: Organoid Production Breakthrough to Help Accelerate Disease and Drug Development Research (prnewswire.com)