Why using human stem cells and their differentiated derivatives in my work?

Using human stem cells, especially induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), provides key advantages for research:

• Disease Modeling: iPSCs derived from patients with specific diseases serve as unique models to study pathogenesis. By comparing the healthy and diseased iPSC-differentiated derivatives, researchers can gain insights into the cellular and molecular alterations of virtually all human cell types targeted by the diseases.

• Personalized Medicine: Patient-derived iPSCs retain the patient's genetic makeup. Such a model allows tailored drug screening and testing of therapeutic efficacy and side effects from drug candidates. Functional cells differentiated from patient-specific iPSCs also represent a practical source of transplantation material for autologous cell therapies.

• Drug Discovery and Toxicity Study: Stem cell-derived tissues like cardiomyocytes and hepatocytes offer a more relevant system for drug testing than animal models. They help earlier and better evaluate drug efficacy and toxicity in human cells, cutting costs and development time.

• Ethical and Practical Benefits: Unlike embryonic stem cells, iPSCs avoid ethical issues and provide a unlimited source of patient-derived cells, essential for large-scale research and therapies.

What are organoids?

Human organoids are multicellular, self-organizing structures developed through the 3D differentiation of human pluripotent or multipotent stem cells in vitro, closely mimicking the complex cellular composition, architecture, and functions of specific tissues and organs in development. Thus, they represent more physiologically relevant models compared to traditional monolayer cell cultures, making them invaluable for studying biological processes, modeling diseases, and screening potential drug candidates. Furthermore, organoids hold great promise as a stable and scalable source of material for both autologous and allogeneic cell-based therapies, offering new hope for patients in need of transplantation.

What the unmet need does your technology and service address?

A major challenge that researchers working with human stem cells and organoids often encounter is overcoming cell heterogeneity, along with inconsistencies in maturity and quality. These variations often arise from differences in cell culture and differentiation techniques, individual or cell clone-specific factors, and operational discrepancies between researchers. As human organoids are valued for their capacity to mimic cellular diversity and complexity found in native human tissues and organs, having a system to efficiently analyze cell heterogeneity, set robust standards, and ultimately ensure consistent organoid quality across individuals and operations is an unmet critical need for truly empowering organoid technologies to facilitate scientific research, pharmaceuticals, and regenerative medicine. Building on the strong expertise and track record that OrganoidPro team has in stem cell and organoid research, we are developing and optimizing innovative process and assay pipelines that will lead to a high-resolution data-guided system to standardize and easily monitor molecular phenotypes and heterogeneity in organoids with different genetic backgrounds and at distinct developmental stages.

What is your core technology and its scientific foundation?

At OrganoidPro, we are capable to leverage many cutting-edge technologies and tools (e.g., confocal microscopy, spectral flow cytometry, next-generation sequencing for DNA and RNA, bioreactors) that currently exist and are frequently used in the operation and characterization of human pluripotent stem cells and differentiated derivatives. We could offer our experience and high standards in cell reprogramming, differentiation, data acquisition and analysis through contracted services to other field scientists and commercial entities that hope to carry out stem cell work with good quality control. Meanwhile, we aim to develop and commercially launch a proprietary technology for 1) efficiently analyzing the molecular heterogeneity of cells developed in human organoids across individuals and operations, 2) digitally modeling and predicting the responses of organoid cells to treatment, building on a scientific and technical foundation of single-cell analysis.

What is the competitive advantages with using contract research service at OrganoidPro?