GSCN White Paper

White Paper

Organoids - from stem cells to future technologies

Organoids are three-dimensional cellular structures grown from stem cells in vitro. They mimic bodily organs, exhibiting similar cellular compositions and functions.
Organoids can be used for basic research and offer great promise for medical research in an extremely wide range of fields, such as drug screening, toxicity tests, and individual drug-response.

Through this White Paper, the German Stem Cell Network (GSCN) and the Interdisciplinary Research Group (IAG) Gene Technology Report of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) (part of the BIH since January 2022) hope to raise public awareness of this research field and stimulate an interdisciplinary public debate on organoids.

The GSCN report on organoids offers a tour of the latest developments in this major research field and of current and potential future applications. The focus is on current organoid research projects and companies, with viewpoints from a range of researchers and stakeholders.
This is followed by the IAG’s core statements and recommendations for action on the use of organoids.

Please find the download here (German version here)

The Springer journal: Journal of Molecular Medicine has published a series of open access review articles on organoids in a special issue in April 2021. The issue was edited by Bon-Kyoung Koo, Sina Bartfeld and Cantas Alev
Read further here

Additionally the IAG has published a book:
Organoide. Ihre Bedeutung für Forschung, Medizin und Gesellschaft (2020)
Herausgegeben von Sina Bartfeld, Hannah Schickl, Cantas Alev, Bon-Kyoung Koo, Anja Pichl, Angela Osterheider, Lilian Marx-Stölting
Forschungsberichte der interdisziplinären Arbeitsgruppen der Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Band 43
Baden-Baden: Nomos (2020)
The book is online available here

GSCN White Paper 2018: Translation - von der Stammzelle zur innovativen Therapie
Analyse und Empfehlungen zur klinischen Translation von Stammzellforschung in Deutschland