# Immune-tumour co-culture models

Source: https://onco.cc/technologies/immune-tumour-coculture-models/  
OnCo record `immune-tumour-coculture-models` (Technology). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

A laboratory model that grows a patient's tumour cells together with immune cells, so researchers can watch whether the immune cells recognise and kill the cancer and test immunotherapies on it before, or alongside, treating the patient.

## Summary

Most tumour cultures, organoids included, contain only cancer cells, so they cannot show how a tumour and the immune system interact. Co-culture models add the immune compartment back. Dijkstra and colleagues (Netherlands Cancer Institute, Cell 2018) co-cultured autologous tumour organoids with peripheral blood lymphocytes from patients with mismatch repair-deficient colorectal cancer and non-small cell lung cancer, enriched tumour-reactive T cells and used them to measure killing of the matched organoids. Neal and colleagues (Stanford, Cell 2018) took the other route: an air-liquid interface method grew patient-derived organoids from more than 100 human biopsies or mouse tumours together with their own embedded immune cells (T, B, NK cells and macrophages), preserved the original tumour T-cell receptor repertoire, and modelled response to anti-PD-1 and anti-PD-L1.

The models are used to study checkpoint response and resistance, to expand tumour-reactive T cells, and to test bispecific antibodies and cell therapies. Whether a co-culture result predicts what happens in the patient has not yet been shown prospectively.

## Fields

- Kind: Technology
- Status: emerging
- Last checked: 2026-11-03
- Also known as: tumour-immune co-culture; organoid-immune co-culture; co-culture immune-tumour models; tumor organoid T cell co-culture
- Principle: Tumour cells or organoids are cultured with autologous immune cells, either added from blood or retained from the tumour itself, and immune recognition and killing are read out by cytokine release, flow cytometry or organoid death.
- Since: 2018
- Strengths: Patient-specific test of immune recognition; Can enrich tumour-reactive T cells; Models checkpoint blockade in a dish
- Limitations: Lacks vasculature, stroma and lymph nodes; Immune cells decline over weeks in culture; Predictive value for patients not yet validated prospectively

## Sources

- Dijkstra et al. 2018, Cell: generation of tumour-reactive T cells by co-culture of peripheral blood lymphocytes and tumour organoids: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2018.07.009
- Neal et al. 2018, Cell: organoid modelling of the tumour immune microenvironment: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2018.11.021

## Connected records

- cancers: [Colorectal cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/colorectal/), [Non-small-cell lung cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/nsclc/)
- fronts: [Drug Discovery Platforms](https://onco.cc/fronts/drug-discovery/), [Immunotherapy](https://onco.cc/fronts/immunotherapy/)
- technologies: [CRISPR functional genomics](https://onco.cc/technologies/crispr-screens/), [Immune checkpoint inhibitors](https://onco.cc/technologies/checkpoint-inhibitor/), [Patient-derived organoids](https://onco.cc/technologies/organoids/), [TIL therapy](https://onco.cc/technologies/til-therapy/), [Tumour-on-a-chip](https://onco.cc/technologies/tumour-on-chip/)
- terms: [Organoid](https://onco.cc/terms/organoid/), [Tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs)](https://onco.cc/terms/tils/)
- companies: [MIMETAS](https://onco.cc/companies/mimetas/)

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