The National Institutes of Health is continuing its mission to reduce the use of animals in drug testing by awarding $87 million in contracts to launch the Standardized Organoid Modeling (SOM) Center, the agency announced in a Sept. 25 release.
The funding, spread out over three years, will support the SOM Center as it takes root at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, a Maryland facility of NIH’s National Cancer Institute (NCI).
“By creating standardized, reproducible and accessible organoid models, we will accelerate drug discovery and translational science, offering more precise tools for disease modeling, public health protection and reducing reliance on animal models,” NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, Ph.D., said in the release.
The SOM Center is a collaboration of multiple NIH institutes—the NCI, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and the Office of Research on Women’s Health—with more set to come on board as the initiative gains momentum.
The center’s goal will be to support regulatory bodies, such as the FDA, as well as clinicians and scientists in academia and industry, by developing standardized organoid models for preclinical testing of potential new drugs, according to the release.
The SOM Center’s initial focus will be on organoids, which are lab-grown tissue models designed to mimic human organs—the liver, lung, heart and intestine—with plans to expand to other organs down the line.
The center “will serve as a national resource to scientists at NIH and investigators from around the country and the world, offering a unique combination of AI and machine learning to develop world-class organoid protocols, advanced robotics for large-scale production and open-access repositories for physical samples and digital resources,” Nicole Kleinstreuer, Ph.D., acting NIH deputy director for program coordination, planning and strategic initiatives, said in the release.
The effort to develop replacements for animal testing goes back years, though it has been thrust deeper into the spotlight due to several high-profile announcements from the second Trump administration.
In August, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, a congressionally mandated nonprofit that supports the NIH's mission, launched a public-private partnership network meant to support promising new alternative methods (NAMs) for drug testing, including the use of organoids.
In April, the FDA announced its intention to end animal testing requirements for new monoclonal antibody drugs, while the NIH unveiled a new office designed to advance NAM development.