Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 13, 2026
Co-Culture of Murine Small Intestine Epithelial Organoids with Innate Lymphoid Cells
Published on: March 23, 2022
Organoid-Immune Cell Co-culture for Stable Live Imaging
Nathalia Ferreira1, Frauke Alves1,2, Andrea Markus3
1Translational Molecular Imaging, Max-Planck-Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Göttingen, Germany.
Abstract:
Patient-derived organoids (PDOs) have emerged as a promising model for personalized drug testing. Generated from human tumor samples, PDOs effectively recapitulate the genetic and phenotypic heterogeneity of patient tumors, making them an ideal ex vivo platform for studying therapeutic responses, particularly to chemotherapies. However, their lack of components of the immune system limits their use in immunotherapy testing. The following protocol facilitates the co-culture of PDOs from tumor tissue with HLA-matched peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) in a fixed Z-plane for stable live-cell imaging. This three-dimensional co-culture method represents a significant advancement in enabling real-time assessment of immunotherapeutic effects on tumor-derived PDOs by live cell imaging.
Insights
Patient-derived organoids (PDOs) offer personalized drug testing by modeling tumor heterogeneity. A new 3D co-culture method enables live imaging of PDOs with immune cells for immunotherapy assessment.
Area of Science:
- Oncology
- Immunology
- Biotechnology
Background:
- Patient-derived organoids (PDOs) are valuable ex vivo models for personalized cancer drug testing.
- PDOs mimic tumor genetic and phenotypic diversity, aiding chemotherapy response studies.
- Current PDO models lack immune components, limiting their utility for immunotherapy research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a protocol for co-culturing PDOs with immune cells for live-cell imaging.
- To enable real-time assessment of immunotherapeutic effects on tumor organoids.
Main Methods:
- Generation of PDOs from human tumor samples.
- Co-culture of PDOs with HLA-matched peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs).
- Utilizing a fixed Z-plane for stable live-cell imaging of the 3D co-culture system.
Main Results:
- Successful establishment of a 3D co-culture system integrating PDOs and PBMCs.
- Facilitation of stable live-cell imaging for real-time monitoring.
- Demonstration of a method to assess immune cell interactions with tumor organoids.
Conclusions:
- This novel co-culture protocol advances PDO utility for immunotherapy research.
- The method allows for dynamic, real-time evaluation of therapeutic responses in a complex tumor microenvironment model.
- This approach holds promise for accelerating the development of personalized immunotherapies.
