Development and Application of Tumor Organoids: An Emerging Platform for Gynecological Cancers

Gynecological cancers pose great health threats to women, in which ovarian cancer (OC), cervical cancer (CC) and endometrial cancer (EC) are most common. Conventional treatment modalities for gynecological cancers, such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, are usually affected by multiple factors like drug resistance and recurrence. Organoids, a three-dimensional culture system derived from stem cells, have been demonstrated to recapitulate the biological structure and function of human organs and gradually used in the treatment of various cancer types, including gynecological cancers. The organoids established from gynecological cancers have patient tumor-dependent morphology and disease characteristics while retaining the tumor's marker expression and genomic profiling, and present heterogeneous inter- and intra-patient drug responses, offering novel insights into drug response of the individual patients. This review provides an overview of recent advancements in the development and application of organoids from gynecological cancers, promoting the understanding of the mechanism underlying tumorigenesis, drug screening prediction and personalized treatment application in gynecological cancers.