Endometrial Organoids: A New Model for the Research of Endometrial-Related Diseases†

Abstract

An ideal research model plays a vital role in studying the pathogenesis of a disease. At present, the most widely used endometrial disease models are cell lines and animal models. As a novel studying model, organoids have already been applied for the study of various diseases, such as disorders related to the liver, small intestine, colon, and pancreas, and have been extended to the endometrium. After a long period of exploration by predecessors, endometrial organoids (EOs) technology has gradually matured and maintained genetic and phenotypic stability after long-term expansion. Compared with cell lines and animal models, EOs have high stability and patient specificity. These not only effectively and veritably reflects the pathophysiology of a disease, but also can be used in preclinical drug screening, combined with patient derived xenografts (PDXs). Indeed, there are still many limitations for EOs. For example, the co-culture system of EOs with stromal cells, immune cell, or vascular cells is not mature, and endometrial cancer organoids have a lower success rate, which should be improved in the future. The investigators predict that EOs will play a significant role in the study of endometrium-related diseases.

Keywords: culture medium composition; drug screening; endometrial organoids; hormone responsiveness.

Figure 1

The culture of process of endometrial organoids (EOs) and their potential applications. EOs can be used for screening for novel therapy, drug testing for personalized medicine, as well as having the potential in regenerative medicine of endometrial-related diseases. Furthermore, gene editing could further assist these functions and all of these functions above can be realized based on the establishment of cryopreserved biobanks of healthy and diseased human EOs.

Figure 2

The advantages of EOs as an ideal model for the study of pregnant and gynecological diseases.