Patient-derived glioblastoma organoids as real-time avatars for assessing responses to clinical CAR-T cell therapy

Patient-derived tumor organoids have been leveraged for disease modeling and preclinical studies but rarely applied in real time to aid with interpretation of patient treatment responses in clinics. We recently demonstrated early efficacy signals in a first-in-human, phase 1 study of dual-targeting chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells (EGFR-IL13Rα2 CAR-T cells) in patients with recurrent glioblastoma. Here, we analyzed six sets of patient-derived glioblastoma organoids (GBOs) treated concurrently with the same autologous CAR-T cell products as patients in our phase 1 study. We found that CAR-T cell treatment led to target antigen reduction and cytolysis of tumor cells in GBOs, the degree of which correlated with CAR-T cell engraftment detected in patients’ cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Furthermore, cytokine release patterns in GBOs mirrored those in patient CSF samples over time. Our findings highlight a unique trial design and GBOs as a valuable platform for real-time assessment of CAR-T cell bioactivity and insights into immunotherapy efficacy.