While the potential of patient-derived organoids (PDOs) to predict patients’ responses to anti-cancer treatments has been well recognized, the lengthy time and the low efficiency in establishing PDOs hamper the implementation of PDO-based drug sensitivity tests in clinics. We first adapt a mechanical sample processing method to generate lung cancer organoids (LCOs) from surgically resected and biopsy tumor tissues. The LCOs recapitulate the histological and genetic features of the parental tumors and have the potential to expand indefinitely. By employing an integrated superhydrophobic microwell array chip (InSMAR-chip), we demonstrate hundreds of LCOs, a number that can be generated from most of the samples at passage 0, are sufficient to produce clinically meaningful drug responses within a week. The results prove our one-week drug tests are in good agreement with patient-derived xenografts, genetic mutations of tumors, and clinical outcomes. The LCO model coupled with the microwell device provides a technically feasible means for predicting patient-specific drug responses in clinical settings.

A superhydrophobic microwell array chip (SMARchip) was developed for high-throughput screening.

In vitro models coupled with multimodal approaches are needed to dissect the dynamic response of local tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) to immunotherapy. Here the patient‐derived primary lung cancer organoids (pLCOs) are generated by isolating tumor cell clusters, including the infiltrated immune cells. A function‐associated single‐cell RNA sequencing (FascRNA‐seq) platform allowing both phenotypic evaluation and scRNA‐seq at single‐organoid level is developed to dissect the TIME of individual pLCOs. The analysis of 171 individual pLCOs derived from seven patients reveals that pLCOs retain the TIME heterogeneity in the parenchyma of parental tumor tissues, providing models with identical genetic background but various TIME. Linking the scRNA‐seq data of individual pLCOs with their responses to anti‐PD‐1 (αPD‐1) immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) allows to confirm the central role of CD8⁺ T cells in anti‐tumor immunity, to identify potential tumor‐reactive T cells with a set of 10 genes, and to unravel the factors regulating T cell activity, including CD99 gene. In summary, the study constructs a joint phenotypic and transcriptomic FascRNA‐seq platform to dissect the dynamic response of local TIME under ICB treatment, providing a promising approach to evaluate novel immunotherapies and to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms.

Three-dimensional cultured patient-derived cancer organoids (PDOs) represent a powerful tool for anti-cancer drug development due to their similarity to the in vivo tumor tissues. However, the culture and manipulation of PDOs is more difficult than 2D cultured cell lines due to the presence of the culture matrix and the 3D feature of the organoids. In our other study, we established a method for lung cancer organoid (LCO)-based drug sensitivity tests on the superhydrophobic microwell array chip (SMAR-chip). Here, we describe a novel in situ cryopreservation technology on the SMAR-chip to preserve the viability of the organoids for future drug sensitivity tests. We compared two cryopreservation approaches (slow freezing and vitrification) and demonstrated that vitrification performed better at preserving the viability of LCOs. Next, we developed a simple procedure for in situ cryopreservation and thawing of the LCOs on the SMAR-chip. We proved that the on-chip cryopreserved organoids can be recovered successfully and, more importantly, showing similar responses to anti-cancer drugs as the unfrozen controls. This in situ vitrification technology eliminated the harvesting and centrifugation steps in conventional cryopreservation, making the whole freeze–thaw process easier to perform and the preserved LCOs ready to be used for the subsequent drug sensitivity test.

Arrayed genetic screens mediated by the CRISPR/Cas9 technology with single guide RNA (sgRNA) libraries demand a high-throughput platform capable of transfecting diverse cell types at a high efficiency in a genome-wide scale for detection and analysis of sophisticated cellular phenotypes. Here we developed a high-throughputin situcell electroporation (HiCEP) microsystem which leveraged the superhydrophobic feature of the microwell array to achieve individually controlled conditions in each microwell and coupled an interdigital electrode array chip with the microwells in a modular-based scheme for highly efficient delivery of exogenous molecules into cells. Two plasmids encoding enhanced green and red fluorescent proteins (EGFP and ERFP), respectively, were successfully electroporated into attached HeLa cells on a 169-microwell array chip with transfection efficiencies of 71.6 ± 11.4% and 62.9 ± 2.7%, and a cell viability above 95%. We also successfully conducted selective electroporation of sgRNA into 293T cells expressing the Cas9 nuclease in a high-throughput manner and observed the four-fold increase of the GFP intensities due to the repair of the protein coding sequences mediated by the CRISPR/Cas9 system. This study proved that this HiCEP system has the great potential to be used for arrayed functional screens with genome-wide CRISPR libraries on hard-to-transfect cells in the future.