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REVIEW ARTICLE

Application of cancer organoids: The forefront of personalized oncology and preclinical testing

Lu-Qi Cao1 ,  Yuhao Xie1 ,  Yuhong Liu2 ,  John Wurpel1 ,  Leli Zeng2* ,  Zhe-Sheng Chen1*
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1 Department of Pharmaceutical Science, College of Pharmacy and Health Science, St John’s University, Queens, New York, United States of America
2 Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Digestive Cancer Research, Precision Medicine Center, The Biobank, Scientific Research Center, The Seventh Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China
OR 2025, 1(2), 025050008 https://doi.org/10.36922/OR025050008
Received: 30 January 2025 | Revised: 21 March 2025 | Accepted: 1 April 2025 | Published online: 29 April 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution -Noncommercial 4.0 International License (CC-by the license) ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ )
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Abstract

Cancer remains one of the most pressing medical problems in the world. Recent years have seen a gradual rise in utilization of “organoids,” a novel in vitro three-dimensional culture technology, in cancer research. Organoids are multicellular structures derived from human stem cells, and cancer organoids can replicate the characteristics, morphology, and functionality of the original tumor in the human body. At present, organoid technology has been widely used in various oncologic contexts, including colorectal, liver, lung, pancreatic, and breast cancers, providing considerable assistance in patient-specific drug testing, precision medicine, and the development of personalized medical strategies. Therefore, this preclinical model contributes to significantly accelerating the translation from basic cancer research to clinical therapeutics. This review discusses the preparation of cancer organoids and their recent progress in multiple cancer research fields. Finally, the challenges of organoid technology in current clinical practice and future development prospects are discussed.

Keywords
Tumor organoids
Cancer
Precision medicine
Preclinical model
Personalized oncology
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
Zhe-Sheng Chen is an Associate Editor of this journal but was not in any way involved in the editorial and peer-review process conducted for this paper, directly or indirectly. Separately, other authors declared that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper.
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