Recent progress in our understanding of the regulation of epithelial tissue stem cells has allowed us to exploit their abilities and instruct them to self-organize into tissue-mimicking structures, so-called organoids. Organoids preserve the molecular, structural and functional characteristics of their tissues of origin, thus providing an attractive opportunity to study the biology of human tissues in health and disease. In parallel to deriving organoids from yet-uncultured epithelial tissues, the field is devoting a growing amount of effort to model human diseases using organoids. This Review describes multidisciplinary approaches for creating organoid models of human genetic, neoplastic, immunological and infectious diseases, and details how they have contributed to our understanding of disease biology. We further highlight the potential role as well as limitations of organoids in clinical practice and showcase the latest achievements and approaches for tuning the organoid culture system to position organoids in biologically defined settings and to grant organoids with better representation of human tissues.

我们对上皮组织干细胞调节的了解的最新进展使我们能够利用它们的能力，并指示它们自我组织成模仿组织的结构，即所谓的类器官。有机体保留了其起源组织的分子，结构和功能特性，因此为研究人体组织在健康和疾病中的生物学特性提供了一个有吸引力的机会。除了从尚未培养的上皮组织中获得类器官外，该领域正在投入越来越多的精力来使用类器官来模拟人类疾病。这篇综述描述了建立人类遗传，肿瘤，免疫和传染性疾病的类器官模型的多学科方法，并详细介绍了它们如何促进我们对疾病生物学的理解。