NPORT

Infrastructure and User Services

UPORT serves as the foundation for standardizing and expanding organoid technology to a national level, supporting research and clinical applications. This includes developing predictive and prognostic platforms for disease progression and treatment selection.

Standardized national protocols for patient inclusion & tissue acquisition
UPORT has already included over 3,000 patients across more than 20 disease entities in organoid derivation protocols at the UMC Utrecht. To ensure ethical, research, and economic integrity, standardized national protocols for patient inclusion are essential. Uniformly trained patient inclusion teams will provide consistent information and consent procedures. Additionally, tissue acquisition procedures vary across hospitals, affecting sample quality. NPORT will establish multidisciplinary teams of specialists to standardize and optimize biopsy procedures across hospitals, ensuring high-quality tissue collection.

Searchable organoid biobank & data integration
Expanded patient-derived organoids will be stored in a centralized liquid nitrogen biobank and linked to a searchable web portal. This platform will allow dedicated searches and controlled clinical and genetic data access, while ensuring compliance with Dutch privacy laws. NPORT will collaborate with major initiatives like BBMRI, HEALTH-RI, and the Dutch Cancer Registry, and other relevant organizations to develop an integrated, FAIR-compliant bio- and databank.

Automated organoid culture platform
To improve efficiency and scalability, NPORT aims to develop robotics for automated organoid processing, culturing, and biobanking. A multidisciplinary collaboration between UMC Utrecht, Utrecht University, and TU Eindhoven, including biologists, engineers, digital image analysis experts and programmers, will work toward a modular robotic platform, enhancing throughput, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness in both research and diagnostics.

Examples/description of the type of research 

UPORT facilitates a wide range of research, from fundamental studies to clinical applications. The platform supports the development of personalized disease models using patient-derived organoids to study disease progression, treatment responses, and therapeutic selection. This approach contributes to precision medicine, allowing for more accurate predictions of individual treatment outcomes, such as in diseases like cancer and cystic fibrosis.

UPORT enables drug discovery by providing living biobanks of organoids for high-throughput screening and preclinical testing, contributing to both disease modeling and biomarker discovery. The platform also includes standardized protocols for patient inclusion and tissue acquisition, ensuring the generation of high-quality, reproducible samples. These protocols facilitate ethical, controlled studies, and the creation of a searchable organoid biobank linked with clinical and genetic data for comprehensive analyses.

The automated culture system being developed will address scalability challenges in organoid processing, improving throughput, traceability, and reproducibility. The modular robotic platform will enhance organoid production, ensuring efficiency for both research and diagnostic applications.

NPORT will build on UPORT's success by expanding these efforts to a national scale, creating a standardized infrastructure for organoid technology across the country. NPORT will foster collaborations and implement nationwide protocols, driving innovation and supporting translational research to advance our understanding of disease at the molecular and clinical levels, ultimately improving patient outcomes. 

How to access the infrastructure?    

NPORT will build on UPORT’s experience to develop a national infrastructure for organoid technology, accessible through a dedicated web portal where users, including non-partners, can submit project proposals. Following feasibility assessment, approved projects begin with a joint kick-off meeting. Meanwhile, organoid-generating robotics will be developed, validated in NPORT-associated labs, and marketed to ensure broader implementation. Organoids from various healthy and diseased tissues will be biobanked and catalogued in a searchable online database containing limited, anonymized genetic and clinical-data. In collaboration with national initiatives, NPORT aims to link organoid-derived data with genetic, clinical, and imaging datasets to support advanced translational research.