Patient-Derived Ovarian Cancer Organoids Mimic Clinical Response and Exhibit Heterogeneous Inter- and Intrapatient Drug Responses.

There remains an unmet need for preclinical models to enable personalized therapy for ovarian cancer (OC) patients. Here we evaluate the capacity of patient-derived organoids (PDOs) to predict clinical drug response and functional consequences of tumor heterogeneity. We included 36 whole-genome-characterized PDOs from 23 OC patients with known clinical histories. OC PDOs maintain the genomic features of the original tumor lesion and recapitulate patient response to neoadjuvant carboplatin/paclitaxel combination treatment. PDOs display inter- and intrapatient drug response heterogeneity to chemotherapy and targeted drugs, which can be partially explained by genetic aberrations. PDO drug screening identifies high responsiveness to at least one drug for 88% of patients. PDOs are valuable preclinical models that can provide insights into drug response for individual patients with OC, complementary to genetic testing. Generating PDOs of multiple tumor locations can improve clinical decision making and increase our knowledge of genetic and drug response heterogeneity.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Interests H.C. is an inventor listed on several patents related to organoid technology. H.C. is the founder of OrganoidZ, which employs organoids for drug development. H.C. is the (unpaid) Chief Scientific Officer of Hubrecht Organoid Technology (HUB), a cofounder of Surrozen, and a scientific advisory board member for Kallyope, Merus, and Decibel. H.C. is a nonexecutive board member of Roche and Genentech and a scientific advisor for Life Sciences Partners. His full disclosure is given at https://www.uu.nl/staff/JCClevers/.
(Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)