Establishment and genomic characterization of patient-derived organoids from gastric-type cervical adenocarcinoma

Gastric-type cervical adenocarcinoma (GAS) is a highly lethal subtype of cervical cancer with poor prognosis and limited treatment options, accounting for approximately 20% of cervical adenocarcinomas in Japan. Owing to its rarity, appropriate research models for GAS are lacking, which has limited our understanding of its molecular biology. In this study, we aimed to establish and characterize patient-derived GAS organoids as a novel research tool to address this critical gap.

Following a standard organoid culture protocol with Matrigel embedding, we successfully established stable GAS organoids from fresh tumor tissue obtained by biopsy from GAS patients. Histopathological and genomic analyses were conducted to evaluate the morphological and genetic fidelity of the organoids in comparison to the parental tumors.

The established GAS organoids recapitulated key morphological and genetic characteristics of the parental tumors. The genomic analysis revealed that the organoids retained copy number variation profiles indicative of a tumor survival genotype. Notably, these changes were observed between organoids derived from the same patient at a different time point, suggesting that organoids could reflect temporal tumor heterogeneity present in the parental tumor.

To the best of our knowledge, these organoids represent one of the first cell-based research resources established from this subtype. They could help advance our understanding of this aggressive disease and offer a potential basis for future molecular and translational research.