Digitalized Human Organoid for Wireless Phenotyping

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a cost-effective and durable method to trace and track individual objects in multiple contexts by wirelessly providing digital signals; RFID is thus widely used in many fields. Here, we implement this concept to biological tissues by producing a compact RFID chip-incorporated organoid (RiO). The 0.4 mm RFID chips are reproducibly integrated inside the self-assembling organoids from 10 different induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines from healthy and diseased donors. We use the digitalized RiO to conduct a phenotypic screen on a pool of RiO, followed by detection of each specific donor in situ. Our proof-of-principle experiments demonstrated that a severely steatotic phenotype could be identified by RFID chip reading and was specific to a genetic disorder of steatohepatitis. Given evolving advancements surrounding RFID technology, the digitalization principle outlined here will expand organoid medicine potential toward drug development, precision medicine, and transplant applications.