Resistance is Futile?

Drug resistance is one of the biggest hurdles in treating cancer. This is especially true for signet ring cell carcinoma (SRCC), a type of stomach cancer, which presents resistance to a variety of drugs from one patient to the next. One solution to this problem is to grow a patient’s tumour cells in the lab and test the effectiveness of different drugs before deciding which to use. However, these lab-grown cells aren’t as complex as real tumours and often don't retain the genetic changes of the original tumour. Researchers now present 3D organoids (pictured using scanning electron microscopy) made from human SRCC (top) and non-SRCC (bottom) tumours. The organoids all maintained the same genetics as the original tumours, as determined by whole exome sequencing. Notably, the SRCC and non-SRCC organoids responded differently to four different cancer drugs, highlighting the usefulness of this model for tailoring drug treatments for patients with SRCC.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Image from work by Guoliang Li and colleagues
• Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Cell Death Discovery, January 2022