The mission of HUMANOID also at UC San Diego Health Sciences is to enable human Phase ‘0 trials for biomedical research. Pertinent details are listed below: HUMANOID is dedicated to build and validate pre-clinical human healthy and disease models as platforms for research and drug development, and enable early ex vivo testing for toxicity and efficacy. With few exceptions, all tissues from human, mouse, embryonic, adult, diseased, normal, iPSCs, can be developed into organoids, and subsequently into disease models with a few network-guided tweaks. Our ex vivo models recreate the complexity in vivo by making multi-dimensional organoids [co-culture techniques that capture the 3D of organoid tissues + microbiome + immune or non-immune cells] In powerful synergy with Center for Network Medicine’s precise AI-assisted target discovery, HUMANOID can build personalized models with patient tissue; together, they enable “precisionalized” medicine. HUMANOID collaborates with an extensive network of clinicians, industry collaborators and basic scientists, both on and off campus. HUMANOID’s services include enabling the research community to access and experiment with human primary cells, organoids, enteroid derived monolayers, derivatives of organoids, support sponsored research projects, provide consultation, offer formal and informal education on organoid research and more. HUMANOID is located on UC San Diego's La Jolla campus, in the George Palade Laboratories (GPL) for Cellular and Molecular Medicine [Room 238]. FREQUENTLY USED APPLICATIONS OF OUR CORE Powerful platform to provide new insights into disease processes and cellular pathways. Drug discovery tool to validate targets and test efficacy of candidate and approved therapeutics in patient-derived, ex-vivo models in a semi-high throughput (HTP) format. Access to biobanked primary cells and organoids from healthy and disease patients (Ulcerative Colitis, Crohn’s, Colon Cancer, IBS, NASH/NAFLD).
