Health · Medical Research · 1 day ago
Organoid study tracks how metastatic colorectal cancer cells evolve
Researchers in South Korea traced how metastatic colorectal cancer cells change over time using tumor models grown from patients’ cells.
The team from the National Cancer Center and KAIST studied tissue from six patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.
They grew individual cancer cells separately and found that cancer cells formed distinct lineages with different genetic changes.
In patients treated with 5-fluorouracil and oxaliplatin, cells had an average of 1,400 chemotherapy-related mutations each, about 8% of their total mutations.
Faster-growing cells accumulated more of these mutations, while dormant or very slow-growing cells had fewer.
Dormant cells may survive treatment and contribute to cancer returning, although the study does not establish that they do so.
The researchers plan to study how dormancy relates to treatment resistance and whether organoids can help predict individual patients’ responses to treatment.
Researchers from the National Cancer Center and KAIST used patient-derived organoids to track how metastatic colorectal cancer cells evolve.
They found that cancer cells develop along different lineages, accumulating different genetic changes.
Fast-growing cells accumulated more chemotherapy-related mutations than dormant or very slow-growing cells.
Tumor cells from patients treated with 5-fluorouracil and oxaliplatin had an average of 1,400 chemotherapy-related mutations per cell, about 8% of all mutations.
The findings may help researchers investigate dormant cells’ role in cancer recurrence and treatment resistance.
- Who
- Researchers from the National Cancer Center and KAIST, led by Professor Kim Beon and Professor Lee Won-hee.
- What
- They used patient-derived organoids to study genetic changes and evolution in metastatic colorectal cancer cells.
- When
- The findings were reported on October 12, 2026. The study period is Not stated.
- Where
- The study used primary and metastatic tumor tissue from six patients. The researchers were based at the National Cancer Center and KAIST in South Korea.
- Why
- Existing analyses of whole tumor samples made it difficult to track how individual cancer cells change over time.
This story does not have two clearly opposing sides.
Researchers built tumor organoids from primary and metastatic tissue from six patients and cultured individual cancer cells separately.
They analyzed the genomes of the organoid clones and 18 tumor tissues to reconstruct the order in which cancer cells accumulated genetic changes.
The research findings were reported, with the study published in Nature Communications.
- Patients
- 6 with metastatic colorectal cancer
- Tumor tissues
- 18 analyzed by whole-genome sequencing
- Chemotherapy-related mutations
- Average of 1,400 per cell in patients treated with 5-fluorouracil and oxaliplatin
- Share of mutations
- About 8% were chemotherapy-related
- Research institutions
- National Cancer Center and KAIST
What people are saying
We established a research platform that builds organoids from patients’ primary and metastatic cancer tissues, separates and cultures them at the single-cell level, and analyzes each cancer cell lineage
We will develop this work to investigate the relationship between cancer cell dormancy and treatment resistance and to predict treatment responses for individual patients
Sources
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