5 Pitfalls To Manual Organoid Work

Written By: Dr. Lehanna Sanders, Director of Business Development and Marketing

Hands-off to Organoid Assays! To be manual or not to be manual-that is the question 

As funding and regulatory agencies place more emphasis on using human-relevant model systems or new approach methodologies (NAMs), organoid culture use is increasing in the research community. With this, many groups are asking, how can I improve the use of organoid culture systems to provide more predictive human data? Most hurdles are centered around the variability that arises through manual operations and workflows.

Below are 5 common pitfalls when conducting organoid work manually:  

1- Inconsistent pipetting:

Person-to-person, day-to-day, or even hour-to-hour, inconsistent pipetting can result in differences in how cells, compounds and organoids are deposited across experimental or assay conditions. This inconsistency leads to variability in assay results and readouts.  

2- Organoid fragmentation and integrity loss  

Manual pipetting can specifically lead to organoid fragmentation due to variable aspirating- and dispensing-related shearing leading to variable organoid numbers (as fragments) per well in a culture or assay. This heterogeneity contributes to data variability and/or reduced organoid performance.  

3- Time-consuming compound addition/media exchanges 

As with any multi-well plate assay, compound additions and media exchanges are time consuming and different assays may require inconvenient timing for these changes to occur.  

4- Limited scaling 

Due to the time intensive nature to ensure consistent pipetting, to prevent organoid fragmentation, and to conduct compound additions and media exchanges, scaled organoid studies are limited when performed manually.  

5- Quality control  

The inconsistencies that arise from manual processing also make it difficult to ensure quality control practices and to conduct these practices efficiently and reliably.  

What can you do? How can you avoid these pitfalls?  

By conducting organoid assays using automated solutions/technologies.  

Below is how the BioAssemblyBot® platforms solve these organoid use challenges and manual pitfalls:  

1- Consisent pipetting

Robotic technologies are programmed to consistently pipette prescribed volumes, eliminating any risk for inconsistency in cell number, media volume or compound concentration. Thereby ensuring that there are no unintentional variables to the assay. Our robotic systems, or BABs, are paired with easy-to-use software programs, called BioApps, allowing users to program volumes, movement paths, and deposition speeds.  

2- Maintaining Organoid Integrity 

Through the precise pipetting control of a robotic system, organoid fragmentation or shearing is minimized, thereby ensuring that organoid culture numbers per well are consistent as well as ensuring that the integrity of the organoid cultures remains intact. This is invaluable for those working with unique patient derived samples as well as those using iPSC derived organoids. Our in-house team of 3D biology experts have validated the settings required to ensure optimal organoid deposition, saving researchers time and materials.  

3- Time savings for compound addition/media exchanges  

Robotic systems can precisely conduct all the necessary compound additions and media exchanges at any time, day or night, freeing up researcher time to conduct other necessary tasks while also saving money in reagents through the lack of waste. Specifically, our BioApps software can easily be modified based on each assay’s unique scheme.  

4- Scale-up 

Reproducibility and precision afforded through robotics enables scale-up, both in terms of types of multi-well plates as well as the quantity of plates. Our BABs can also plug into existing infrastructure for seamless process integration to further enable scale.  

5- Quality control integration

Automation platforms integrated with quality control platforms and programmed through integrated software systems enable decision points to be determined based on data output.  This saves time and costly materials required to run organoid assays.  

Why Advanced Solutions?  

Advanced Solutions is uniquely suited to enable the automation of organoid assay work by providing bundled solutions tailored to the needs of scientists and researchers that are working with organoids.  

Time is saved by not programming platforms from scratch to conduct any variety of tasks related to common practices and workflows that are part of organoid work, and our team of experts are ready and available to see how our technologies can fit into your current workflows without causing disruption, enabling the removal of pitfalls without reinventing the wheel.  

Contact us to explore how we can help you experience your organoid-automated!