Bioreactor and Bioprocessing of organoids to enable their market-wide drug screening application

Organoid culture is a new technique that, unlike the use of cell lines, maintains tumour properties in the lab. Organoid cultures should improve the rate at which new drugs are discovered since they should lower the number of ineffective drugs that make their way through animal testing; this will directly lead to new, more effective drugs plus reductions in animal usage in early-stage testing. Realising the potential of organoids in these roles is currently limited by the small numbers of organoids that can be grown in the lab and the expansion of organoid growth is a bottleneck in wider progress, i.e. the ability to supply organoids to pharmaceutical company customers. Therefore the aim of this new collaboration is to develop a bioreactor and accompanying bioprocess to scale up organoid culture. 3D cultures have been developed from a number of different tumour types, however we have chosen to focus initially on colorectal cancer. This particular tumour type is the third biggest cause of cancer morality within the U.K. with approximately 5,000 new cases per year in Wales alone. Ultimately we aim to expand this platform to other tumour types.