Researchers analysed thousands of laboratory-made plasmids and discovered that nearly half of them had defects, raising questions of experimental reproducibility.
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Seven years after creating their first organoid - a three-dimensional organ-bud grown in a test tube - Dutch researchers say the technique has changes the lives of more than 1,500 sufferers of cystic fibrosis, and dozens more with cancer.
The technique takes a sample from an organ such as the stomach, then uses stem-cell technology to grow it in a lab to produce hundreds of tiny living clusters known as organoids.
These are then tested with different drugs or combinations of drugs to gauge which are the most effective.
"If we have a drug or a combination of drugs that show responsiveness in the organoid model, we are going to treat the patient with that drug or that combination of drugs," Kors van der Ent, professor in paediatric pulmonology at the University Medical Center, Utrecht, told Al Jazeera.
"We use the organoid's responses as a sort of predictor for drug therapy in the patient."
Dramatic change
Rather than relying on the results of generalised clinical trials or their own experience, doctors can use the results of the organoid experiments to choose...