Use of Organoids in Cancer: A New Therapeutic and Research Approach

Background: The last decades pushed research in the cancer field, bringing to the development of new therapeutic strategies, but still tumors are one of the major threats to health in developed countries. Intratumor genetic and cellular heterogeneity is likely to influence the therapeutic outcome. Hence, the necessity to work on a modulable and scalable system which can recapitulate, in vitro, the complexity of “real” tumors led to the development of organoids. Organoids are identified as tridimensional structures able to retain original heterogeneity of both healthy and tumoral tissues, which can be expanded and cryopreserved but also used for toxicology studies or reconstituted with cells naturally belonging to their microenvironment. In this review, we described how organoids can be obtained from different tissues, what are the most commonly used protocols for their culture, their application for personalized medicine, and finally pros and cons in their use. Methods: Literature resources were retrieved both from PubMed database and Google search engines. The major keywords used were organoids, personalized medicine, tumoral organoids, organoid culture methods, adult stem cells, pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), and biobank. All terms were used in combination with organ nomenclature. Results: Here we reviewed the most used culture organoid protocols with a special focus on the microenvironment reconstitution with immune cells as well as the description of different organoid culture types. Conclusions: Organoid technology is a valuable system for cancer research and nowadays represents the most reliable in vitro system for these types of studies.