# PDAC organoid pharmacotyping

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

## TL;DR

Growing a patient's pancreatic tumour as mini-organs in a dish and testing chemotherapies on them to pick the regimen most likely to work.

## Summary

Tuveson (CSHL) and others established PDAC organoids with transcriptomic signatures predicting FOLFIRINOX versus gemcitabine sensitivity (Tiriac 2018). Prospective trials (e.g., PASS-01, HOPE) test organoid- or signature-guided first-line choice. Turnaround (~4-6 weeks) and take rate (~70%) are the practical limits; the GATA6 classical/basal-like signature is a faster proxy.

## Fields

- Kind: Technology
- Status: emerging
- Last checked: 2026-09-06
- Principle: Endoscopic biopsy or resection tissue grown in Matrigel with defined factors; dose-response to drugs read by viability assays.
- Strengths: Direct functional read-out where genomics offers little; Platform for RAS-inhibitor combination testing
- Limitations: Timeline exceeds the clinical decision window for many patients; No stroma or immune compartment

## Sources

- Tiriac et al., Organoid profiling identifies common responders to chemotherapy in pancreatic cancer (Cancer Discovery 2018): https://doi.org/10.1158/2159-8290.CD-18-0349

## Connected records

- cancers: [Borderline resectable pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/borderline-resectable-pdac/), [Pancreatic acinar cell carcinoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/pancreatic-acinar-cell-carcinoma/), [Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/pancreatic/)
- fronts: [Diagnostics & Biomarkers](https://onco.cc/fronts/diagnostics/), [Drug Discovery Platforms](https://onco.cc/fronts/drug-discovery/)
- technologies: [Ex vivo drug sensitivity screening in blood cancers (EXALT)](https://onco.cc/technologies/functional-precision-medicine-haematology/), [Functional (ex vivo) drug testing](https://onco.cc/technologies/functional-drug-testing/), [Organoid-guided therapy at scale](https://onco.cc/technologies/organoid-guided-therapy-scale/), [Patient-derived organoids](https://onco.cc/technologies/organoids/)
- institutions: [Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory](https://onco.cc/institutions/cold-spring-harbor/)
- key papers: [Organoid Profiling Identifies Common Responders to Chemotherapy in Pancreatic Cancer](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-tiriac-cancer-discov/)
- terms: [Classical versus basal-like (squamous) subtypes of pancreatic cancer, and GATA6](https://onco.cc/terms/classical-vs-basal-like/)
- people: [David A. Tuveson](https://onco.cc/people/david-tuveson/)
- bottlenecks: [Lab models that fail to predict what happens in patients](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-preclinical-models/)
- ideas: [Grow each trial patient's tumour as organoids to decide which platform arm opens next](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-tr2-organoid-coclinical-arms/)
- roadmaps: [Drug discovery roadmap: screening in mice → maps of dependency → designing in silico](https://onco.cc/roadmaps/drug-discovery-roadmap/)

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