Systematic review: predictive value of organoids in colorectal cancer

While chemotherapy alone or in combination with radiotherapy and surgery are important modalities in the treatment of colorectal cancer, their widespread use is not paired with an abundance of diagnostic tools to match individual patients with the most effective standard-of-care chemo- or radiotherapy regimens. Patient-derived organoids are tumour-derived structures that have been shown to retain certain aspects of the tissue of origin. We present here a systematic review of studies that have tested the performance of patient derived organoids to predict the effect of anti-cancer therapies in colorectal cancer, for chemotherapies, targeted drugs, and radiation therapy, and we found overall a positive predictive value of 68% and a negative predictive value of 78% for organoid informed treatment, which outperforms response rates observed with empirically guided treatment selection.

Automated summary

This article presents a systematic review of studies on the performance of patient-derived organoids in predicting the effect of anti-cancer therapies in colorectal cancer. The review shows that patient-derived organoids have a high predictive value for treatment outcomes in chemotherapy, targeted drugs, and radiation therapy for colorectal cancer.