DKTK School of Oncology Tech Talk
with Dr. Tim Schmäche
Postdoctoral Scientist at the Department of Visceral, Thoracic and Vascular Surgery, University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden
Wednesday 17.09.25 | 16:00 - 17:00 via Zoom
Join our first DKTK School of Oncology Tech Talk in 2025 with Dr. Tim Schmäche who will talk about "From Protocol Search to Culcture Success: Practical Insights into Establishing Patient-Derived Organoids". After his presentation there will be ample opportunity to ask questions to the speaker and to engage in a lively discussion.
Patient-derived organoids (PDOs) are increasingly used as physiologically relevant models for cancer research, offering unique opportunities for drug testing and personalized medicine. While the potential of PDOs is widely recognized, their successful establishment and long-term maintenance remain technically demanding and often require tumor-specific protocol adaptations.
In this TechTalk, I will provide a practical overview of PDO generation from various gastrointestinal tumor entities. Topics will include tissue processing, protocol selection, medium optimization, and quality control strategies. I will also discuss common challenges and pitfalls encountered during culture establishment, and how to navigate them based on experience with a large PDO biobank. The goal is to share hands-on insights that may help others set up and refine their own PDO pipelines.
SPEAKER
Dr. Tim Schmäche (University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden)
Schmäche is a postdoctoral scientist in the “Gastro-intestinal Stem Cell & Cancer Biology” group (AG Stange) at the Department of Visceral, Thoracic and Vascular Surgery, University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden, and a member of the Preclinical Model Unit of the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT/UCC) Dresden. In this role he develops and applies patient-derived organoid (PDO) systems to unravel stem-cell-driven tumor biology and to guide precision treatment of gastro-intestinal malignancies. His research combines high-throughput functional genomics with co-clinical organoid trials. Schmäche is first author of a 2024 Molecular Cancer study that established an organoid-based threshold able to predict response to FLOT neoadjuvant chemotherapy in esophago-gastric adenocarcinoma, and co-author of the first negative-selection CRISPR/Cas9 screen in gastric-cancer PDOs that revealed the druggable KDM1A-NDRG1 axis (Small Methods 2023). Before his postdoc, Schmäche trained as a biochemist at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (B.Sc./M.Sc.) and completed his doctoral work in Dresden, where he now supervises Ph.D. and medical students and co-leads DFG- and Deutsche-Krebshilfe-funded organoid projects. His expertise spans cancer-stem-cell biology, organoid engineering, CRISPR functional screens and translational drug testing.
VENUE
The Talk will take place online via Zoom.
Registered participants will receive the login information.
ORGANIZER
DKTK School of Oncology
HOST
Michael Baumann, German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg
