Advancing women's health research and treatment with patient-derived cancer organoids

Tumoroids, also known as cancer organoids, are self-assembled three-dimensional cultures of patient-derived tumor cells. Compared to traditional 2D cancer cell lines, tumoroids better maintain key characteristics of the original tumor including the genotype and transcriptome, which lead to better in vitro modeling of clinically relevant functional responses such as drug sensitivity. In this two-part webinar, experts on cancer organoid culture will discuss how these cancer models are being used to improve women’s health-related research and cancer treatment. In the first presentation, Dr. Chris Yankaskas will discuss how Gibco™ OncoPro™ Tumoroid Culture Medium supplemented with defined tissue-specific supplements, FGF10 and beta-estradiol, enables the derivation of hormone-responsive endometrial tumoroids from tumor resections. Endometrial tumoroids derived by his team were capable of growing embedded in basement membrane extract (BME) or in suspension with dilute BME added and could be cryopreserved and recovered. Tumoroids retained gene expression levels (both presence and absence) of estrogen receptor and progesterone receptor for up to the 20 passages tested in vitro, which could facilitate studies to understand the signaling mechanisms and potential ways to modulate them in the context of cancer. Additionally, key oncogenic mutations were preserved between initial tumor samples and in vitro tumoroids. In the second presentation, George de Fraine will discuss his research focused on novel therapeutic development for triple-negative breast cancer. Overall, this method provides a toolset for studying endometrial and breast cancers using physiologically-relevant cell models and may be more broadly applicable to other gynecological or hormone-dependent cancers applicable to women’s health research.