Mini-guts Grown from Colon Cancer Spark New Treatment Hopes

Using tumor tissue from cancer patients, researchers have grown miniature colons that have successfully replicated key properties of the original tumors. These stand-in “guts” could be useful for testing out drugs and experimenting with treatments.

They have the potential to be tailored to fit each individual patient. The findings were published in the journal, Cell, by Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Hubrecht Institute.

It has always been a challenge to predict drug sensitivity of individual patient, because each have their unique genetic mutations. Many labs use experimental models created from cells grown using a patient's cancerous tissue (tumor-derived cell lines) … do not reflect the tumors enough

These 3D cultures called organoids made – or “mini organs," which are different from cells in a petri dish, is how they replicate important features of the original tissue. Scientists have grown human intestinal and gastric organoids in the lab. This international team has grown 22 organoids from the tumor tissue of 20 colorectal cancer patients.

Scientists also grew 19 normal organoids using healthy tissue from the same patients.

The results?  Researchers found that the cancer-causing genetic mutations in the cultures closely matched those in the tumor biopsies. This confirmed that the organoids have captured the genomic features of the tumors from which they came. This is the first time that a collection of cancer organoids has been derived from patient tumors. The implications of this are that these tumor organoids can improve doctors ability to develop more effective cancer treatment.