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Updated: Dec 18, 2025
Ovarian Cancer Patient-Derived Organoid Models for Pre-Clinical Drug Testing
Published on: September 15, 2023
Patient-Derived Ovarian Cancer Organoids Mimic Clinical Response and Exhibit Heterogeneous Inter- and Intrapatient
Chris Jenske de Witte1, Jose Espejo Valle-Inclan1, Nizar Hami2
1Genetics, Center for Molecular Medicine, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht University, Universiteitsweg 100, 3584 CG Utrecht, the Netherlands; Oncode Institute, Jaarbeursplein 6, 3521 AL Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Abstract:
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.
