OrganoVIR Labs Open Hour

Last month, on the 28th of September 2023, OrganoVIR Labs opened its doors for the very first “Open Lab Hour”. That morning, our scientists welcomed fellow scientists from the clinical virology department at the Amsterdam UMC and gave them a closer look at how we work with organoids within our laboratories.

 

The session began with a warm welcome from our Senior Scientist, Adithya Sridhar, who gave an introduction of OrganoVIR Labs and an explanation as to why we use human organoids to study human viruses. Following the introduction, our Postdoctoral Researcher, Carlemi Calitz explained how organoids are formed and the exciting projects that our PhD students are working on within our laboratories.

(left: Adithya Sridhar, right: Carlemi Calitz)

The session then continued with a lab tour, led by our Research Technician, Eline Freeze, who showed the visitors how our research with human organoids are carried out. At Amsterdam UMC, our researchers operate within two different laboratories; the organoid culture lab (where our researchers culture brain, lung, and gut organoids) and the virus infection lab (where our researchers infect the aforementioned organoids with human viruses). Both of our laboratories are BSL-2 (Biosafety Level 2) laboratories.

(Eline Freeze leading the lab tour)

“I am really proud to showcase what we have built within our laboratories here – that we have developed multiple organoid models” said OrganoVIR Labs co-head, Katja Wolthers. “I think that it is important to make our research results more visible. We are proud of what we are doing and we want to show our work to people” she added.

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