ChristianaCare Establishes Organoid Core to Power Precision Cancer Treatment
ChristianaCare’s Cawley Center for Translational Cancer Research has launched a groundbreaking organoid core—marking the first time such an advanced, patient-specific modeling platform has been established within a community cancer center program in the United States. The new facility, housed inside the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute, represents a major step forward for precision oncology, giving researchers and clinicians the ability to grow and test living tumor models derived directly from patients’ own cancer cells. Through this pioneering approach, the organoid core offers the potential to transform how cancer is diagnosed, understood and treated in Delaware, and could become a national model for community-embedded translational research.
While organoid programs—sometimes referred to as “tumor-on-a-chip” systems—have emerged at several major academic institutions, ChristianaCare’s initiative stands out as the first to be fully integrated into a community cancer care network. This distinction is significant: community centers provide the majority of cancer care in the U.S., yet rarely have access to the sophisticated research infrastructure found in large academic medical systems. By embedding organoid technology directly where patients receive care, ChristianaCare is helping to close this longstanding research-to-clinic gap and accelerate the delivery of personalized treatment options.
What the Organoid Core Provides
At the heart of the ChristianaCare organoid core is the ability to create miniature, three-dimensional tumor cultures known as organoids. These tiny structures are developed from the tumor tissue of individual patients and are engineered to retain the biological, molecular and genetic characteristics of the original cancer. Because they mirror the behavior of the patient’s actual tumor far more accurately than conventional two-dimensional cell lines, organoids serve as powerful real-world models for studying treatment response, resistance patterns and emerging therapy strategies.
“These mini-tumors enable researchers to screen drugs faster, identify new biomarkers and discover which treatments are most likely to work for each patient,” said Thomas Schwaab, M.D., Ph.D., Bank of America Endowed Medical Director of ChristianaCare’s Helen F. Graham Cancer Center and Research Institute. “This core is a bridge between the lab and the clinic. By growing living tumor models from cells of individual patients, we can test real-world drug responses and tailor treatments for them in ways that were not possible before.”
Organoid cultures allow researchers to test dozens or even hundreds of therapies—targeted drugs, immunotherapies, or drug combinations—against an individual patient’s tumor outside the body, without delay or risk to the patient themselves. These readouts provide essential clues about which therapies will likely be most effective, allowing clinicians to make more informed treatment decisions.
A New Level of Research Capability
The new ChristianaCare organoid core gives the Cawley Center an unprecedented ability to conduct drug screening, discover biomarkers and investigate mechanisms of sensitivity or resistance to therapies. As researchers generate a large and diverse organoid biobank representing the broad range of cancers seen across the state, they will create an invaluable dataset reflecting real-world tumors—not just those from academic referral centers.
Because ChristianaCare provides care for more than 70 percent of cancer patients in Delaware, the center has access to a uniquely comprehensive collection of tumor samples from individuals across different demographics, ages and cancer stages. The diversity of this patient population means the organoid biobank will capture tumor types and molecular signatures that may be underrepresented in academic repositories. This real-world representation is essential to improving health equity in cancer research.
One especially valuable aspect of ChristianaCare’s access to patient samples is the availability of treatment-naïve tumor tissue. These are cancer cells collected before a patient receives chemotherapy, radiotherapy or immunotherapy. Studying untreated tumor cells enables researchers to observe the intrinsic biology of the cancer, without confounding effects from prior therapies, making organoids an ideal model for early-stage drug discovery.
Transforming Preclinical Development
Bringing a new cancer therapy from laboratory concept to clinical use is an enormous challenge. Drug development is notoriously expensive, time-consuming and inefficient—costs can range from $1.3 billion to as high as $2.8 billion, with nearly one-third of that investment front-loaded into preclinical testing. Yet despite these high costs, more than nine out of every ten compounds entering animal testing fail to advance to human clinical trials.
One of the key reasons for failure lies in the limitations of traditional preclinical models. Standard mouse models, while useful, often cannot fully mimic the complexity of human tumors, leading to inaccurate predictions about how a therapy will perform in people. This mismatch contributes to costly project failures and delays in getting potentially lifesaving medicines to market.
Organoid models offer a promising solution. Because they retain the patient’s own genetic mutations, signaling pathways, stromal interactions and other tumor-specific features, organoids can provide a more faithful representation of human disease. By integrating organoid testing early in the drug evaluation process, researchers at the Cawley Center aim to reduce the number of ineffective compounds entering clinical trials and accelerate the advancement of therapies with the strongest potential to benefit patients.
The organoid core is designed to function in synergy with ChristianaCare’s existing infrastructure—including a robust tumor tissue collection program, clinical trial network and longstanding community partnerships. Together, these resources create a streamlined, end-to-end pipeline from discovery science to patient care. Promising therapies tested in organoids can be rapidly moved into early-phase trials within the same institution, reducing turnaround times and bringing innovative treatments to local patients more quickly.
A Turning Point for Translational Research
For researchers at ChristianaCare, the organoid core represents a pivotal milestone in the evolution of community-based cancer research.
“Our goal is to shorten the distance between discovery and treatment,” said Nicholas J. Petrelli, M.D., director of the Cawley Center. “Too many promising drugs fail because early models do not capture the complexity of real tumors. The organoid core helps solve that problem. We can now test therapies in models that reflect the patients we actually serve.”
Dr. Petrelli emphasized that this advancement is not merely a technological upgrade but a fundamental shift in how community cancer centers can contribute to national precision medicine efforts. Instead of relying solely on academic centers to drive early-stage development, ChristianaCare is carving out a place where community-level tumor biology informs—and accelerates—the creation of new treatments.
Jennifer Sims Mourtada, Ph.D., associate director at the Cawley Center, echoes this vision. “This is a turning point for translational research in community health,” she said. “Organoid technology lets us study cancer in a way that feels personal. We are not just looking at data points. We are studying living models of a patient’s tumor, which can reveal how that person’s cancer might behave or respond to treatment. This approach brings science closer to the people it is meant to help.”
Dr. Mourtada notes that the intimate connection between patient care and research is a defining strength of the organoid core. When patients consent to have their tumor tissue banked, they directly contribute to research efforts that may benefit others with the same disease. Meanwhile, insights emerging from the organoid work can be quickly translated into therapeutic decisions that support the very patients who donated tissue in the first place. This reciprocal cycle fuels a powerful model for patient-centered innovation.
A Model for the Nation
The launch of this organoid core aligns with a larger movement to democratize access to advanced biomedical technologies. Historically, tools like organoid platforms have only been available at top-tier academic research institutions, leaving community centers at a disadvantage. ChristianaCare’s commitment to building a sophisticated translational research ecosystem within a community setting underscores its dedication to reducing disparities and expanding scientific opportunity.
By pioneering a scalable and replicable model, ChristianaCare hopes to inspire other community cancer centers across the country. The success of this effort may serve as a blueprint for how local health systems can integrate advanced technologies to improve patient outcomes and contribute meaningfully to national research efforts.
In developing the organoid core, the Cawley Center has positioned itself at the forefront of personalized oncology, ensuring that patients in Delaware—and eventually beyond—benefit from treatments tailored to the unique biology of their own tumors. Through this initiative, the center is not only enhancing local cancer care but also redefining how scientific discovery and patient treatment can work together in real time.
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