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MINI-REVIEW

Artificial Intelligence Virtual Organoid Laboratories (AIVO-Labs)

Long Bai1,2,3,4† ,  Jian Wang5† ,  Jiacan Su1,2,3,6*
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1 Institute of Translational Medicine, Shanghai University, Shanghai , China
2 MedEng-X Institutes, Shanghai University, Shanghai , China
3 National Center for Translational Medicine (Shanghai) SHU Branch, Shanghai University, Shanghai , China
4 Wenzhou Institute of Shanghai University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang , China
5 Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore , Singapore
6 Department of Orthopedics, Xinhua Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai , China
†These authors contributed equally to this work.
Received: 26 December 2025 | Revised: 7 September 2026 | Accepted: 14 September 2026 | Published online: 21 September 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Organoids reproduce important tissue features, but variability in biomaterials and culture, labor-intensive workflows, limited standardization, and predominantly endpoint readouts constrain reproducibility and longitudinal interpretation. We propose Artificial Intelligence Virtual Organoid Laboratories (AIVO-Labs), a closed-loop experimental paradigm that couples physical organoid experiments with Artificial Intelligence Virtual Organoids (AIVOs) as continuously updated digital twins. Unlike an AIVO, which represents an individual organoid-scale computational counterpart, an AIVO-Lab is a laboratory-level, cross-experimental platform that coordinates data acquisition, model calibration, experiment selection, and prospective wet-lab validation across repeated cycles. In this bidirectional workflow, each physical result updates the AIVO, while model predictions prioritize the next experiment, directly addressing slow iteration, variable protocols, and endpoint-focused analysis. The framework builds on Artificial Intelligence Virtual Cells (AIVCs), which encode multimodal cell states as universal representations that can be interrogated by virtual instruments, and extends them to organoid scale through models of cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions. We outline a three-layer architecture comprising data, model, and interaction layers and discuss applications in drug screening, mechanism and resistance mapping, developmental and disease trajectories, and toxicology. AIVO-Labs are presented as a research framework whose predictions require prospective validation, transparent uncertainty estimates, and appropriate governance.

Keywords
Artificial intelligence
Organoid
AIVOs
AIVCs
AIVO-Labs
Funding
This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (82230071, 32471396, 82427809), Shanghai Committee of Science and Technology (23141900600, Laboratory Animal Research Project), and Young Elite Scientist Sponsorship Program by China Association for Science and Technology (YESS20230049).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
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Organoid Research, Electronic ISSN: 3082-8503 Published by AccScience Publishing