Organoids and their promising potential
Using organoids to study immunotherapy has been an emerging technique. In a study published in 2019, a method of co-culturing tumour organoids with peripheral blood lymphocytes generated immune cells that recognize and kill autologous tumour organoids. This method preserves the original tumour T-cell spectrum and accurately models the immune checkpoint blockage, eliciting tumour cytotoxicity. Studies have also shown that organoids have been utilized to study the effects of antigen receptor-mediated cytotoxicity on solid tumours (1,2).
Vital factors supporting the clinical applicability of organoids is efficiency and reproducibility. Efficiency is important, as it allows a quick turnaround time to form the biopsy to know the most appropriate therapy for the patient (3).
Organoid culturing involves the digestion, seeding, and cultivation of each patient-derived tissue for individually generated organoids. Furthermore, existing organoid cultures are limited in their ability to accurately reproduce the intracellular microenvironment that allows organogenesis and might lead to some developmental variations (4,5).
Moreover, drug screening with patient- derived organoids have helped to develop new therapeutic strategies such as radiotherapy have also been investigated for cancer treatment. Studies have found that chemoradiation responses in patients were highly matched to organoid responses (6,7).
REFERENCES:
1. Cattaneo C, et al. Tumor organoid-T-cell coculture systems. Nat Protoc. 2019;15:15–39.
2. Neal JT, et al. Organoid modeling of the tumor immune microenvironment. Cell. 2018;175:1972–88.
3. Broutier L, et al. Human primary liver cancer-derived organoid cultures for disease modeling and drug screening. Nat Med. 2017;23:1424–35.
4. Gao D, et al. Organoid cultures derived from patients with advanced prostate cancer. Cell. 2014;159:176–87.
5. Driehuis E, et al. Oral mucosal organoids as a potential platform for personalized cancer therapy. Cancer Discov. 2019;9:852–71.
6. Yao Y, et al. Patient-derived organoids predict chemoradiation responses of locally advanced rectal
7. Pasch CA, et al. Patient-derived cancer organoid cultures to predict sensitivity to chemotherapy and radiation. Clin Cancer Res. 2019;25:5376–87.cancer. Cell Stem Cell. 2020;26:17–26.
