The University of Colorado Anschutz (CU Anschutz) welcomes Alice Soragni, PhD, a nationally recognized leader in patient-derived tumor organoids and functional precision oncology. Soragni will launch a new Functional Personalized Medicine Initiative designed to advance a faster, more direct way to identify promising treatments for patients with the most challenging-to-treat solid tumors, with an emphasis on generating actionable results in days.
Soragni joins CU Anschutz from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), where she built a leading program focused on generating miniature tumor avatars, known as organoids, using a patient’s own tumor cells and testing treatment response directly in living tumor tissue. Her laboratory pioneered a miniaturized, high-throughput organoid platform, referred to as a mini-ring assay, engineered to rapidly compare the effect of multiple therapies and combinations on a patient’s tumor, and to do so on timelines compatible with real clinical decision-making.
Soragni was also recently elected co-president of the Society for Functional Precision Medicine, an international organization advancing the use of functional assays in clinical care, co-founded by Anthony Letai, MD, PhD, now director of the NCI, and the Society’s inaugural president.
“What excites me most is the chance to build a program where speed and scientific rigor come together for patients who urgently need better options,” said Soragni. “Our goal is to bring functional testing into a space where it can truly influence care, not years from now, but in the moments when decisions matter.”
Soragni will serve as Director of the Functional Personalized Medicine Initiative within the Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine (CCPM). She will be a professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) and the Department of Neurosurgery, and the inaugural holder of the Marsico Chair in Excellence in Functional Precision Medicine.
At the core of Soragni’s program is the ability to take a small piece of tumor tissue collected during routine surgery or biopsy and, within less than one week, generate thousands of organoid avatars that mimic how the patient’s tumor behaves. These copies allow researchers, and ultimately clinicians, to observe how a specific tumor responds to many therapeutic options at once, including immunotherapies, without exposing the patient to those treatments directly. This reduces the guesswork involved in treatment selection and can help patients get the most effective therapies as quickly as possible.
“For me, central to our work is giving patients options where there are few. Rare and aggressive cancers often leave clinicians with more questions than answers, and that is where functional testing can open new avenues,” explained Soragni. “We are not just generating data; we are charting a path to data-driven decision-making that supports clinicians in identifying the best treatment options for patients with urgent clinical need.”
Unlike traditional models that rely on implanting tumors into mice, a process that takes months, Soragni’s platform does not rely on animal models, aligning with national efforts by the NIH and FDA to accelerate the transition toward complex ex vivo patient‑derived and computational approaches.
Organoids can be generated from many tumor types, but Soragni’s lab has become especially known for its work on rare cancers, where research models are extremely limited or may not exist at all. Her team will continue this focus at CU Anschutz while also supporting campus‑wide initiatives that target complex, resistant cancers such as pancreatic cancers, brain tumors, and brain metastases across tumor types.
The CCPM’s Functional Personalized Medicine Initiative represents a next step in precision oncology, complementing existing information, such as from tumor genomics and clinical history, with functional testing that observes how an individual patient’s tumor responds to therapies under controlled conditions. The long-term goal is to bring this capability closer to point-of-care use by building the clinical-grade workflows, quality systems, and prospective evidence needed to evaluate where rapid functional testing can most improve treatment selection, particularly when options are limited.
“This is an important opportunity to advance functional precision medicine in a way that is both ambitious and clinically grounded,” said Casey Greene, PhD, chair of DBMI and director of CCPM. “Dr. Soragni brings a platform that can turn a patient’s tumor into a living test bed for therapy selection, on a timescale that matters. Our priority is to integrate this capability with CCPM’s biobank, clinical data, and care partnerships. In the longer term, there is a remarkable opportunity to pair this technology with AI-enabled methods that help interpret functional results, connect them to genomics and outcomes, and support clinicians in evaluating options. We will validate this carefully, so functional testing and AI-driven insights can be assessed alongside genomics and clinical context.”
The work will be closely integrated with multidisciplinary clinical teams and disease-focused programs across CU Anschutz. Soragni’s joint appointment in Neurosurgery will support collaboration with teams treating aggressive and complex central nervous system tumors, where the consequences of trial-and-error can be high and where speed is often essential.
“For patients with aggressive tumors, time matters, and so does confidence in the next step,” said Peter Fecci, MD, PhD, chair of neurosurgery at the CU Anschutz School of Medicine. “Dr. Soragni’s approach moves us toward a future where we can evaluate therapies directly on a patient’s tumor quickly and systematically, while holding ourselves to the standards of clinical validation. That combination of speed and rigor is exactly what is needed to build better options for patients facing the hardest diagnoses.”
In its initial phase, the Functional Personalized Medicine Initiative will focus on establishing robust clinical workflows for tumor sampling and organoid generation, building standardized quality controls and reporting, and launching prospective studies to assess feasibility, reliability, turnaround time, clinical concordance, and sustainability. Over time, the program aims to define clear, evidence-based pathways for how rapid functional testing could be used to support care teams and patients, including those who have exhausted standard options.
Soragni’s recruitment was supported by coordinated investment across the campus, reflecting CU Anschutz’s commitment to accelerating discovery, expanding personalized medicine capabilities, and strengthening the ecosystem that connects biomedical informatics, laboratory innovation, and clinical care.
“Many institutions are looking to build clinical organoid platforms at this time,” noted Soragni. “What makes CU Anschutz unique is the CCPM infrastructure and program. There is a clear institutional commitment to innovation, and the systems are in place to take this science to the next level rapidly.”
Her entire research team will relocate to Colorado, ensuring continuity and accelerating the Initiative’s launch.
“This is exactly the kind of work CU Innovations exists to support, translating breakthrough science into solutions that can be implemented in real clinical settings,” said Kimberly Muller, Esq., Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Biotechnology. “When you combine a platform built for speed and scale with campus-wide partnership and the right clinical infrastructure, you create a pathway to move from discovery to impact responsibly. Our focus is on helping teams build the collaborations, operational readiness, and real-world validation needed so innovations like this can ultimately reach patients.”