Gastroesophageal cancers are leading causes of cancer death. Our attempts at adopting molecularly based treatment approaches have been slow and ineffective even though we begin to identify specific targetable gene mutations and pathways. It is clear that we should no longer treat all gastroesophageal cancers as a homogeneous disease, which is what we do when we use non-specific chemotherapy. However, we currently cannot monitor successful gene/pathway targeting, nor understand how/when tumors develop resistance, nor predict which patients will derive maximal benefit. To improve outcomes, we must precisely detail the heterogeneity of these tumors to then individualize cancer therapy as well as develop novel avenues to study and predict treatment effects in individual patients. To this end, patient-derived organoids, in which tumor cells from individual patients are grown in a Petri dish, are a new versatile system that allows for timely expandability, detailed molecular characterization, and genetic manipulation with the promise of enabling predictive assessment of treatment response. In this review, we will explore the development and basic techniques for organoid generation, and discuss the current and potential future applications of this exciting technology to study the basic science of carcinogenesis and to predict/guide cancer patient care in the clinics.

中文翻译：

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用于研究胃食管癌的肿瘤类器官：入门。

胃食管癌是癌症死亡的主要原因。尽管我们开始确定特定的可靶向基因突变和途径，但我们采用基于分子的治疗方法的尝试进展缓慢且无效。很明显，我们不应该再把所有的胃食管癌都当作同种疾病来对待，这是我们在使用非特异性化疗时所做的。然而，我们目前无法监测成功的基因/通路靶向，也无法了解肿瘤如何/何时产生耐药性，也无法预测哪些患者将获得最大益处。为了改善结果，我们必须精确地详细说明这些肿瘤的异质性，然后个性化癌症治疗，并开发新的途径来研究和预测个体患者的治疗效果。为此，患者来源的类器官，其中来自个体患者的肿瘤细胞在培养皿中生长，是一种新的多功能系统，可以及时扩展、详细的分子表征和基因操作，有望对治疗反应进行预测评估。在这篇综述中，我们将探索类器官生成的发展和基本技术，并讨论这一令人兴奋的技术在研究致癌基础科学和预测/指导临床癌症患者护理方面的当前和潜在的未来应用。