ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Oncol.
Sec. Radiation Oncology
Volume 15 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fonc.2025.1677172
Dose Response Test of Patient-derived Cancer Organoids to Irradiation
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Medical Oncology, Jinjiang Municipal Hospital, Quanzhou, China
- 2Department of Vascular Surgery, Fujian Medical University Affiliated First Quanzhou Hospital, Quanzhou, China
- 3Department of Hematology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology Tongji Medical College Tongji Hospital, Wuhan, China
- 4Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Huazhong University of Science and Technology Tongji Medical College Tongji Hospital, Wuhan, China
- 5Department of Basic Medicine, Changsha Medical University, Changsha, China
- 6Department of Radiation Oncology, Wuzhou Red Cross Hospital, Wuzhou, China
- 7Department of Radiation Oncology, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, China
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Patient-derived cancer organoids emerged as an innovative model in basic and translational medicine research, as well as precision medicine. However, most radiation oncologists are still unaware of the value of organoids in radiation oncology research, especially in precision radiation oncology. The methods for assessment of organoids cell death after irradiation was also undefined. In this study, three organoid lines were successfully established from the surgical specimens of rectal cancer patients. These organoid lines displayed diverse architecture and captured heterogeneity of the tumors. Genetic characterization of rectal cancer organoids showed that the most frequently mutated genes and pathways among rectal cancer tumors also presented in rectal cancer organoids. Our results also revealed that cancer organoids were easy to use for the research of radiobiology of cancer. The survival of rectal cancer organoids after X rays irradiation could be validated by image-based analysis, while the cell viability tested by cell counting kit-8 failed. The survival curves generated from imaging analysis were more representative, which had an initial linear slope, followed by a shoulder, and tended to become straight again. As far as we know, this was the first study to investigate the appropriate testing method of using organoids to study cancer radiosensitivity, suggesting that image-based analysis is more accurate than cell viability.
Keywords: Organoids, precision medicine, rectal cancer, irradiation, dose response
Received: 31 Jul 2025; Accepted: 07 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yu, Lin, Chen, Liu, Liu, Li and Yao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Hualong Liu, bastienly@whu.edu.cn
Jing Li, lijinggebo@126.com
Ye Yao, yaoye@sysucc.org.cn
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