Technical University of Munich gets 3.8 million euros for endowed professorship and laboratory

The Heinz Nixdorf Foundation is presenting over 3.8 million euros to the Technical University of Munich (TUM) for research on organoid model systems. Organoids can help in understanding the molecular fundamentals of illness and health and bringing these findings to clinical application, in particular for individualized cancer therapies. The funding will be used for an endowed TUM professorship for AI-supported organoid development and the highly specialized Heinz Nixdorf Laboratory for Organoid System Analytics.

Organoids are mini-organs generated in the laboratory which can grow outside the body under cell culture conditions. This makes it possible to generate organ-specific and illness-specific organoids from stem cells or a patient’s cells, providing direct access to the complex processes of organ development and illness-related defective developments. This is particularly important in active ingredient testing and opens up an opportunity to developing patient-specific therapies. In addition, in the long term organoid technology could potentially reduce the amount of animal testing.

The Heinz Nixdorf Professorship for AI-Supported Organoid Development will focus its research in particular on the acquisition and integrative analysis of data sets from cellular microsystems and organoids. The Heinz Nixdorf Laboratory for Organoid System Analytics will enable the fully automated generation of organoid, genomics and proteomics analyses. The building of the newly founded TUM Center of Organoid Systems, which is currently under construction, will house both the laboratory and the professorship.