Best of CASE District VII Award
 

Institution: Stanford University

Title of entry: Telling the story of assembloids

About this entry: A year before his study published, Sergiu Pasca, MD, a Stanford Medicine neuroscientist, alerted our editors to promising new research out of his lab that could vastly expand our understanding of psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia and lead to new treatments or, potentially, cures.

Pasca pioneered a method for using skin tissue to grow tiny clumps of living neural tissue – called organoids — that replicate specific regions of the human brain. When fused together, they become self-organizing clumps of neural tissue – called assembloids — that form complex circuits.

In the latest research, the team grafted human organoids into the brains of young rats to create a method of studying the brain that can provide new insights into the development of the brain and neurological disease.

To communicate the promise of the research to open new frontiers of discovery and to signal Pasca’s leadership in brain-modeling as well as in biomedical ethics, the content team launched a large-scale campaign and coverage plan that included aligning with Pasca to make the coverage as accessible and broad as possible.

Working with Pasca and science writer Bruce Goldman, our team developed deliberately crafted language to describe and explain the research that leaves little room for sensationalizing or misrepresenting it as if it’s science fiction.

Our multi-asset coverage of Pasca’s work and leadership in this emerging field resulted in tremendous media pick-up with nearly 3,000 media mentions recognizing the importance and promise of his lab’s research.