A Rapid and Scalable Approach for Screening Personalized ASOs

Organoids, three-dimensional cell models that can replicate an individual’s organs, are valuable tools for testing medicines that might treat their illness. It can, however, take up to $10,000 and a year to grow organoids using conventional methods from patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells. Researchers at Children’s Mercy Kansas City’s Genomic Medicine Center developed a way to do this from about $200 and in two to three weeks. We spoke to Scott Younger, director of disease gene engineering at Children Mercy Kansas City’s Genomic Medicine Center, about the process, the test it ran to match three children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy to an antisense oligonucleotide therapy, and the potential impact this may have on developing customized therapies for people with rare genetic diseases.