Published today (Aug. 5) in Nature, researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and their collaborators across five clinical sites in the UK developed a large biobank of tumor models, known as organoids. The biobank is expected to have wide utility, enabling scientists to identify the genes that specific cancers depend on for growth and revealing potential weak points that could be targeted with future treatments.

The study is published alongside two complementary papers from international collaborators, reflecting a wider multiyear effort to refine organoid models and make them more accessible to the research community.