Patient-derived organoids, creating a new window of opportunities for pancreatic cancer patients

Standard-of-care regimens for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) include a combination of chemotherapies, which are associated with toxicity and eventually tumor resistance. The lack of relevant tool to identify and evaluate new therapies in PDAC necessitates the search for a model, especially for cases with treatment resistance to standard of care. In the study from Peschke et al (2022), they describe a longitudinal platform to identify drug-induced vulnerabilities following standard-of-care chemotherapy treatment using patient-derived organoids (PDOs) providing an opportunity to predict therapeutic response and define new treatment vulnerability induced by standard of care. Previously, tumor resistance to chemotherapy has typically been described as selection for resistant tumor cell populations. However, Peschke et al (2022) demonstrated that PDAC cells seemed to acquire resistance not only through genetic changes, but also through modifications in cellular plasticity leading to gene expression and metabolism changes. Thus, the study supports this type of platform for the identification of new therapeutic targets following standard-of-care treatments in PDAC.