The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced a bold new initiative to expand the use of human-based technologies and reduce reliance on animal models in federally funded research. This marks a significant milestone for the biomedical community and underscores the growing importance of organoids, tissue chips, computational models, and other innovative approaches that better reflect human biology.
As part of this initiative, the NIH will establish the Office of Research Innovation, Validation, and Application (ORIVA) to lead the transition. The office will oversee new funding priorities, ensure grant review criteria emphasize human relevance, and bring in reviewers with expertise in nonanimal methodologies. Importantly, NIH will also begin tracking and reporting how funds are distributed between animal and human-based approaches, signaling a new level of accountability and transparency.
For companies like ours, which are focused on automating organoid testing for drug discovery, this announcement is both validating and energizing. It reinforces the scientific and ethical value of human-relevant systems and highlights the urgent need for scalable, reproducible, and automated platforms. By reducing variability and enabling higher throughput, automation makes organoid models not just a research tool, but a cornerstone of translational medicine.
This shift means more than just new grant opportunities — it reflects a broader cultural change. Human-based systems are moving from the periphery of drug development to the center. With NIH prioritizing these technologies, the demand for robust, validated organoid models will only grow. We are proud to be at the forefront of this transformation, helping build the future of drug discovery where innovation, ethics, and human relevance align.
