Singapore - Scientists at Cincinnati Children's have received an instrumental investment in their work to personalize medicine through organoid technology. This cutting-edge approach uses a person's own stem cells to create new tissues, allowing doctors to find answers about a child's specific disease and how to treat it.

The Farmer Family Foundation has pledged $5 million to advance this pioneering research, which is being conducted at Cincinnati Children's Center for Stem Cell and Organoid Medicine (CuSTOM).

"Organoid technology gives researchers a first-in-class platform for laboratory research on living diseased tissue, which cannot be done on patients," says Aaron Zorn, PhD, the organoid center's director. "It can provide human modeling systems in a petri dish for developing and testing drugs before expensive clinical trials."

The center's goal is to use healthy, genetically matched tissues for regenerative medicine and eventually transplant. This organ-generation technology has the potential to address a shortage of organs available for transplantation.