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Modeling liver cancer and therapy responsiveness using organoids derived from primary mouse liver tumors

The current understanding of cancer biology and development of effective treatments for cancer remain far from satisfactory. This in turn heavily relies on the availability of easy and robust model systems that resemble the architecture/physiology of the tumors in patients to facilitate research. Cancer research in vitro has mainly been based on the use of immortalized 2D cancer cell lines that deviate in many aspects from the original primary tumors. The recent development of the organoid technology allowing generation of organ-buds in 3D culture from adult stem cells has endowed the possibility of establishing stable culture from primary tumors. Although culturing organoids from liver tumors is thought to be difficult, we now convincingly demonstrate the establishment of organoids from mouse primary liver tumors. We have succeeded in culturing 91 lines from 129 liver tissue/tumors. These organoids can be grown in long-term cultures in vitro. About 20% of these organoids form tumors in immunodeficient mice upon (serial) transplantation, confirming their tumorigenic and self-renewal properties. Interestingly, single cells from the tumor organoids have high efficiency of organoid initiation, and a single organoid derived from a cancer cell is able to initiate a tumor in mice, indicating the enrichment of tumor-initiating cells in the tumor organoids. Furthermore, these organoids recapitulate, to some extent, the heterogeneity of liver cancer in patients, with respect to phenotype, cancer cell composition and treatment response. These model systems shall provide enormous opportunities to advance our research on liver cancer (stem cell) biology, drug development and personalized medicine.