3D Organoids Lead the Way for Personalized Cancer Therapy | Cancer Research | Corning

As oncology researchers continue to find immense value in the applications of3D organoidsfor their work, one area stands to gain a great deal from the advancements of thesein vivo-like environments and cultures: personalized medicine.

As an inherently molecular approach to cancer therapy, precision medicine relies entirely on matching up individualized responses with potential treatments — something organoids are uniquely suited to predict given their composition. Organoids are derived from stem cells or progenitor cells, and when mixed with a hydrogel, such asCorning^®Matrigel^®matrixorcollagenfor organoid cultures, create a functioning mini-manifestation of the parent organ.

What results is a tiny bladder, breast, liver, or other material that you can see, study, and interact with to test and optimize cancer therapies — just as if it werein vivo. But it's not, and that has many advantages.

Organoids' utility — like their biology — is multidimensional: As authors of an exploratory paper in theJournal of Hematology and Oncologypointed out, 3D organoids are ideal for personalized medicine because they can mimicin vivobiology in genotype and phenotype, plus represent natural iterative evolutions that can span multiple generations.

They have the benefit of speed and scale too. In comparison to xenograft murine models which can take months to grow enough for single use, 3D organoids require less time to establish given the stem cells' recapitulating nature. Certain techniques in the lab can save even more time: As reported inThe Scientist, one UCLA researcher's system grows organoids from ovarian resections within just a week's time.

As a result, you can simultaneously test multiple drugs on multiple organoids to predict response with stunning accuracy. According to一个圣udyinvolving gastrointestinal cancer therapies,3D organoids detected when drugs would fail 100 percent of the time, and when they would succeed nearly 90 percent of the time.