Facilitating Personalized Immunotherapy with Interventional Radiology and Tumor Organoids

Personalized immunotherapy is a novel treatment approach aiming to increase precision and reduce toxicity compared with traditional immune checkpoint inhibitors. Tumor organoids derived from interventional radiology (IR) biopsy specimens can provide a powerful platform, positioning IR centrally in developing and delivering these therapies. Patient-derived tumor organoid (PDO) cultures amplify tumor biomass, enabling identification of tumor-specific neoantigens. Co-culture of PDOs with autologous immune cells allows activation and expansion of tumor-reactive T cells from the same patient, which can serve as biomarkers and therapeutic targets for investigating tumor-specific immune responses following locoregional therapies. IR can play a critical role in PDO-based personalized immunotherapy by providing tumor sampling for organoid culture and delivering locoregional therapies that not only control tumor progression but also prime systemic immune responses during therapy preparation. Although promising, organoid-based personalized immunotherapy remains mostly in preclinical stages. Integrating IR interventions with PDO platform could accelerate the clinical translation of personalized immunotherapy.