On Sept. 25, 2025, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the award of contracts for launching the Standardized Organoid Modeling (SOM) Center, a national resource that will be dedicated to using cutting-edge technologies to develop standardized organoid-based new approach methodologies (NAMs) that deliver robust, reproducible, and patient-centered research findings.

With contracts totaling $87 million for the first three years, the center will be housed at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNLCR), a facility supported by NIH’s National Cancer Institute (NCI). The center’s goal will be to leverage the latest technologies to enable real-time optimization of organoid protocols.

Organoids are small, lab-grown tissue models that replicate the structure and function of human organs, offering alternatives to animal models. However, most organoid models are currently produced in academic settings through trial and error, slowing their ability to be reproduced across labs. The NIH SOM Center will address these reproducibility challenges through using technologies including artificial intelligence, robotics, and a variety of human cell sources to establish standardized organoid models that can be used widely by researchers and accepted by regulators, accelerating scientific discoveries and decisions.

The NIH SOM Center is designed to support a wide array of users, including scientists and researchers from academic institutions, industry, and government; clinicians in need of patient-specific models; and the broader scientific community, including industry partners and educators. It will provide open access to protocols, data, and organoids, promoting global collaboration.

The center will also work with regulatory bodies, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, to develop models that meet preclinical testing standards, accelerating development of new disease treatments and safety assessments. The center will initially focus on organoid models of the liver, lung, heart, and intestine, with plans to expand to additional organ systems and disease-specific models.