Abstract
The disease model is crucial for discovering a new drug and therapy. Currently, organoid technology allows the generation of a self-assembled, 3-dimensional cellular structure. We aimed to use innovative tissue culture to create cancer organoids from cancer tissues of retinoblastoma and breast cancer patients. The success rate was 80 and 32 % for retinoblastoma and breast cancer organoids, respectively. Cancer organoids faithfully recapitulated genetics, gene expression, and histogenesis in the parental cancer tissues. For retinoblastoma, a candidate cancer drug exhibited high efficacy and potency for all subtypes of retinoblastoma in drug screening. The drug signature of retinoblastoma organoids suggested that the candidate drug had dual inhibition of retinoblastoma and angiogenesis. Retinoblastoma growth was inhibited via drug-induced cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. Of note, the candidate drug for retinoblastoma exhibited low toxicity to the retina compared with clinically used drugs. For breast cancers, the drug response profiles were alike between breast cancer organoids and the patients. Nine candidate drugs were more effective for killing cancer cells when compared with the drugs that failed to cure breast cancer of the patients. Generating and collecting cancer organoids would benefit the discovery of universal or personalized therapeutic agents for cancer treatment.
