Hi, thank you for your question. Firstly as a note on how we select PBMC donors: we select for non-inflammatory conditions (Non-smoker, non-obese, etc.) as well as perform immunophenotyping to ensure all immune cell populations are within standard healthy range.
We do see expected variation between multiple PBMC donors in the magnitude of recruitment response, as well as in downstream barrier damage. Currently we are expanding our immunophenotyping to assess responsiveness to our cytokine treatment. We also see a variation in therapeutic response between PBMC donors for small molecule, corticosteroid and biologic drugs tested. This may be aligned with clinical data since IBD therapeutics have historically lower response rates from 50-60%, and even lower remission rates ([1], [2]). We have yet to determine which factors indicate a responsive PBMC donor – this is still a burning question for predicting patient response clinically.
The work so far has not investigated multiple intestinal organoid donors, but it would be a useful avenue to pursue to build robustness.
Hope this helps address your question