Development of tumour assembloids that offer new potential to improve cancer therapy - now available at Nature!
We are pleased to announce that our most recent research regarding the generation of patient-specific tumour assembloids recapitulating tumour-CAF-T cell crosstalk that shape immunotherapy efficacy has been published in Nature!
In this research, our team overcame the limitations of existing tumour models by building “tumour assembloids”, a patient-tailored tumour replica in which the tumour cells, stromal cells, and immune cells that make up a real patient’s tumour tissue are reconstituted in 3D.
We generated combinatorial, mix-and-match tumour assembloids by conditionally reconstituting multiple components of human renal cell carcinoma, including cancer cells, cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) and tumour-infiltrating immune cells. Tumour assembloids not only precisely reproduced the key pathological and physiological features of patients’ tumor tissue, but also mimicked the differing responses to cancer immunotherapy seen in individual patients. Using this, we identified how interactions among cancer cells, stromal cells, and immune cells affect the therapeutic efficacy of cancer immunotherapy.
Furthermore, we found that in patients who respond well to immunotherapy, interactions between cancer cells and surrounding stromal cells help keep immune cells in a state in which they can respond to the cancer, whereas in patients who respond poorly, these interactions do not function properly. This study shows that the effect of cancer immunotherapy is not determined by the characteristics of tumour cells alone, but can vary depending on complex interactions among tumour cells and the stromal and immune cells surrounding them.
The tumour assembloid developed here is an innovative, patient-specific, next-generation cancer model platform. This new model is expected to be used to uncover processes of cancer development that could not be explained with existing cancer models, to predict individual patients’ treatment responses, to develop new anticancer drugs, and to discover new treatment strategies that enhance their effects.
"The tumour assembloid we have built can both predict and reproduce a patient’s tumor characteristics and response to cancer immunotherapy, so we expect it to be used as a new platform for patient-tailored treatment research and new drug development."
Congratulations for the splendid work!
Title: Tumour assembloids recapitulate tumour-CAF-T cell crosstalk in renal cancer
Published: October 28, 2026 in Nature
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