3D co-culture platform reveal insights into patient autologous immune cell-tumor interaction and immune modulation in vitro

Understanding tumor microenvironment (TME) and immune microenvironment are vital to devising therapeutic interventions against tumors. Robust models that mimic patient-specific immune interactions invitro become necessary with the recent promise of immunotherapeutics. Organoid models recapitulate patient tumor morphology and 3D architecture but fall short in recapitulating complex immune biology of native human tumors. Infiltrating immune populations, especially tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL), vastly impact patients' response to therapies.

Here we describe a co-culture platform of patient-derived xenograft-derived organoids (PDXO) with autologous TIL to simulate the tumor-specific immune response and immune modulation ex vivo. The described model allows high throughput screening of immune-modulatory therapies on anti-tumor T cell functions.