Industry partnerships are crucial for more than just funding. Collaborating with pharmaceutical companies provides translation-focused questions that guide the design of advanced cell models, ensuring they are predictive, scalable, and compatible with real-world development workflows.

In preclinical drug development, choosing the right biological model is the most critical initial decision. Selecting an inappropriate model, such as the wrong PDX or organoid line, guarantees the research program will fail as it will be designed to answer the wrong question from the outset.

Traditional 2D cell cultures can be misleading. Advanced 3D models, by reconstituting the tumor microenvironment with stromal cells, can uncover mechanisms of drug resistance (e.g., to ADCs) that are completely invisible in simpler systems, providing more clinically relevant data.

Only 5% of investigational cancer drugs reach the market due to the gap between lab models and human biology. Dr. Saav Solanki highlights organoids, which use real patient tissue, as a key translational model to improve the predictive accuracy of preclinical research and increase the low success rate.

The technology behind new cell cryopreservatives also enables short-term (3-5 days), ice-free cold storage of complex structures like organoids and organs. This overcomes a major hurdle in their transportation and use, as they traditionally cannot be frozen or held for long periods.

The next frontier in preclinical research involves feeding multi-omics and spatial data from complex 3D cell models into AI algorithms. This synergy will enable a crucial shift from merely observing biological phenomena to accurately predicting therapeutic outcomes and patient responses.

The NIH will no longer award funding to new grant proposals that rely exclusively on animal models. This policy forces a shift towards New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), such as organoids and organ-on-chips, serving as a major catalyst for innovation and adoption in the preclinical testing space.

Unlike cell-line derived (CDX) models, PDX models are grown directly from patient samples without a culture phase. This preserves the original tumor's heterogeneity, leading to more clinically relevant and predictive data in preclinical radiopharmaceutical studies.

A 3D model is considered "advanced" when it's a bioactive system recreating a tissue's microenvironment. It's not just about three-dimensional growth; cells must both influence and be influenced by their surroundings, including architecture, diffusion gradients, and mechanical cues, to be truly representative.