Impact

The HCA|Organoid project will have impact on following levels, which together will enhance innovation capacity and foster research on human health issues:

  1. Contributing to the HCA and its biomedical vision
    The openly available and deeply characterized organoid collection of the HCA|Organoid project will enable functional and disease-centric studies pursuing HCA insights. Thus, providing access to a sufficiently large and well‐characterized collection of normal organoids from healthy individuals provides a reference against which disease‐associated aberrations (e.g., altered gene expression programs or the lack or overrepresentation of certain cell types) can be distinguished from normal population variation. Moreover, a collection of organoids from different individuals with comprehensive single‐cell sequencing and single‐cell imaging data will enable informed decisions to identify the most suitable organoids for disease modeling, drug response profiling, and generation of patient-specific in vitro “avatars” to support personalized treatment decisions.

  2. Promoting organoid technology
    The pilot action of the HCA|Organoid project will scale organoid production and single‐cell characterization to over two hundred individuals which will drive standardization, provide reference data, and facilitate the adoption of study designs that explicitly account for population variation in organoid research.

  3. Connecting communities The HCA|Organoid project is strongly committed to better connecting the single‐cell and organoid research communities which will boost HCA’s impact on human health. Long-term impact and sustainability will be promoted for example by open sharing of organoids and protocols, training, and outreach activities.