Colorectal cancer (CRC) is among the deadliest cancers worldwide, with metastasis being the main cause of patient mortality. During CRC progression the complex tumor ecosystem changes in its composition at virtually every stage. However, clonal dynam...
Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality characterized by progressive renal fibrosis, and in extreme cases, renal failure. Human CKD models that replicate the biological complexity of the kidney and CKD are lacking and...
In 2022, prostate cancer (PCa) is estimated to be the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men in the United States—almost 270,000 American men are estimated to be diagnosed with PCa in 2022. This review compares and contrasts in vivo models of PC...
Neonicotinoids are synthetic, nicotine-derived insecticides used worldwide to protect crops and domestic animals from pest insects. The reported evidence shows that they are also able to interact with mammalian nicotine receptors (nAChRs), triggering...
The advent of immunotherapy has transformed the treatment landscape for several human malignancies. Antibodies against immune checkpoints, such as anti-PD-1/PD-L1 and anti-CTLA-4, demonstrate durable clinical benefits in several cancer types. However...
Pancreatic cancer (PC) is anticipated to be second only to lung cancer as the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States by 2030. Surgery remains the only potentially curative treatment for patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcin...
Patient-derived organoid (PDO) models have been widely used in precision medicine. The inability to standardize organoid creation in pre-clinical models has become apparent. The common mouse-derived extracellular matrix can no longer meet the require...
To address the shortcomings of existing anti-VEGF monotherapy in neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD), we investigated the therapeutic capabilities of exosomes obtained from human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived retinal o...
For over a century, early researchers sought to study biological organisms in a laboratory setting, leading to the generation of both in vitro and in vivo model systems. Patient-derived models of cancer (PDMCs) have more recently come to the forefron...
Background/Objectives: Colorectal cancer (CRC) remains a major global health burden, marked by complex tumor–microenvironment interactions, genetic heterogeneity, and varied treatment responses. Effective preclinical models are essential for di...
The CDH1 gene, encoding the cell adhesion protein E-cadherin, is one of the most frequently mutated genes in gastric cancer and inactivating germline CDH1 mutations are responsible for hereditary diffuse gastric cancer syndrome (HDGC). Using cell via...
Lung epithelial organoids for the hazard assessment of inhaled nanomaterials offer a promising improvement to in vitro culture systems used so far. Organoids grow in three-dimensional (3D) spheres and can be derived from either induced pluripotent st...
Ovarian cancer (OC) is the leading cause of death from gynecological malignancies. Despite great advances in treatment strategies, therapeutic resistance and the gap between preclinical data and actual clinical efficacy justify the necessity of devel...
Recent technical advances in the stem cell field have enabled the in vitro generation of complex structures resembling whole organs termed organoids. Most of these approaches employ culture systems that allow stem cell-derived or tissue progenitor ce...
Purpose: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has the lowest five-year survival rate of all cancers in the United States. Programmed death 1 receptor (PD-1)-programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) immune checkpoint inhibition has been unsuccessful in cl...
An inadequate supply of fresh tissue is a major limitation of three-dimensional patient-derived gastric organoid research. We propose that tissue procurement for organoid culture could be increased by developing a cold storage shipment protocol for f...
Generation of kidney organoids from pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) is regarded as a potentially powerful way to study kidney development, disease, and regeneration. Direct differentiation of PSCs towards renal lineages is well studied; however, most o...
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common form of liver cancer. This study aims to develop a new method to generate an HCC mouse model with a human tumor, and imitates the tumor microenvironment (TME) of clinical patients. Here, we have gener...
Ensuring drug safety for patients with specific neurological disorders is of paramount importance. For instance, certain antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) are contraindicated in Dravet Syndrome (DS), which is characterized by a deficiency in Na+ channel fun...
Human cerebral organoids are readily generated from human embryonic stem cells and human induced pluripotent stem cells and are useful in studying human neurodevelopment. Recent work with human cerebral organoids have explored the creation of differe...
In the pursuit to understand intestinal epithelial cell biology in health and disease, researchers have established various model systems, from whole animals (typically rodents) with experimentally induced disease to transformed human carcinomas. The...
The diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease (PD) is initiated after the occurrence of motor symptoms, such as resting tremors, rigidity, and bradykinesia. According to previous reports, non-motor symptoms, notably gastrointestinal dysfunction, could p...
Targeting testosterone signaling through androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) or antiandrogen treatment is the standard of care for advanced prostate cancer (PCa). Although the large majority of patients initially respond to ADT and/or androgen recepto...
Colon cancer is the third most prominent cancer and second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Up to 20% of colon cancers follow the serrated tumor pathway driven by mutations in the MAPK pathway. Loss of SMAD4 function occur...
DNA methylation in neurons is directly linked to neuronal genome regulation and maturation. Unlike other tissues, vertebrate neurons accumulate high levels of atypical DNA methylation in the CH sequence context (mCH) during early postnatal brain deve...
Self-organization is a process that ensures histogenesis of the eye retina. This highly intricate phenomenon is not sufficiently studied due to its biological complexity and genetic heterogeneity. The review aims to summarize the existing central the...
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a heterogeneous disease that includes both hereditary and sporadic types of tumors. Tumor initiation and growth is driven by mutational or epigenetic changes that alter the function or expression of multiple genes. The gene...
We previously established mouse models of biliary tract cancer (BTC) based on the injection of cells with biliary epithelial stem cell properties derived from KRAS(G12V)-expressing organoids into syngeneic mice. The resulting mouse tumors appeared to...
Gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GISTs) are the most common mesenchymal tumours of the gastrointestinal tract and a key example for targeted therapy with tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), which have significantly improved survival rates. However, n...
Liver organoids (LOs) are receiving considerable attention for their potential use in drug screening, disease modeling, and transplantable constructs. Hepatocytes, as the key component of LOs, are isolated from the liver or differentiated from plurip...
Pancreatic cancer is characterized by late diagnosis, therapy resistance, and poor prognosis, necessitating the exploration of early carcinogenesis and prevention methods. Preclinical mouse models have evolved from cell line-based to human tumor tiss...
Background: Alveolar type 2 (AT2) cells and bronchioalveolar stem cells (BASC) perform critical regenerative functions in response to lung damage. Published data show that nonhematopoietic, bone marrow-derived “very small embryonic-like stem cells” (...
Patient-derived model systems are important tools for studying novel anti-cancer therapies. Patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) have gained favor over the last 10 years as newer mouse strains have improved the success rate of establishing PDXs from pat...
Metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) remains challenging because of the emergence of resistance mechanisms to anti-epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) therapeutics, so more effective strategies to improve the patients’ outcome are needed. Du...
Immunosuppression in cancer has emerged as a major hurdle to immunotherapy efforts. Immunosuppression can arise from oncogene-induced signaling within the tumor as well as from tumor-associated immune cells. Understanding various mechanisms by which...
Background: T cell regeneration in the thymus is intrinsically linked to the T cell-biased lineage differentiation of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs). Although nonhuman primates (NHPs) serve as indispensable models for studying thymic...
As one of the leading causes of death from disease, cancer continues to pose a serious threat to human health globally. Despite the development of novel therapeutic regimens and drugs, the long-term survival of cancer patients is still very low, espe...
Familial pancreatic cancer (FPC) represents a significant yet underexplored area in pancreatic cancer research. Basic research efforts are notably limited, and when present, they are predominantly centered on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations due to the...
In our previous study, adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) cultured in a three-dimensional (3D) organotypic system exhibited mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition (MET) features, including cobblestone morphology and increased expression of E-cadherin an...
Pediatric high-grade gliomas (pHGGs), particularly diffuse midline gliomas (DMGs), are among the most lethal brain tumors due to poor survival and resistance to therapies. DMGs possess a distinct genetic profile, primarily driven by hallmark mutation...
Tissue radiosensitivity plays a critical role in the overall outcome of radiation therapy. Identifying characteristics that predict how a patient may respond to radiotherapy enables clinicians to maximize the therapeutic window. Limited clinical data...
Pathologies induced by viral infections have undergone extensive study, with traditional model systems such as two-dimensional (2D) cell cultures and in vivo mouse models contributing greatly to our understanding of host-virus interactions. However,...
Visceral leishmaniasis caused by Leishmania donovani is one of the major neglected tropical diseases attributable to parasitic protozoa. In the absence of an effective vaccine, chemotherapy remains the only available therapeutic option. However, curr...
Human iPSC-derived liver organoids (LO) or hepatic spheroids (HS) have attracted widespread interest, and the numerous studies on them have recently provided various production protocols. However, the mechanism by which the 3D structures of LO and HS...
Similar to other flaviviruses, Zika virus (ZIKV) produces abundant subgenomic flavivirus RNA (sfRNA) derived from the 3’ untranslated region. The molecular mechanisms that determine the functions of sfRNA are currently not completely understood. Here...
Breast cancer (BC) is among the most common neoplasms globally and is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in women. Despite significant advancements in prevention, early diagnosis, and treatment strategies made over the past two decades, br...
Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) are aggressive cancers that contribute to significant morbidity and mortality in humans. Although numerous human xenograft models of OSCC have been developed, only a few syngeneic models of OSCC exist. Here, we rep...
American women with obesity have an increased incidence of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). The impact of obesity conditions on the tumor microenvironment is suspected to accelerate TNBC progression; however, the specific mechanism(s) remains el...
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Therefore, the need for new therapeutic strategies is still a challenge. Surgery and chemotherapy represent the first-line interventions; nevertheless, the prognos...
Patient-centered precision oncology strives to deliver individualized cancer care. In lung cancer, preclinical models and technological innovations have become critical in advancing this approach. Preclinical models enable deeper insights into tumor...
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