# Build laboratory models of the organs cancer spreads to

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-bio1-metastatic-niche-models/  
OnCo record `idea-bio1-metastatic-niche-models` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Cancer usually kills by spreading to bone, liver, lung or brain. Almost all laboratory models grow tumours under the skin instead, where the surroundings are nothing like those organs.

## Summary

Subcutaneous xenografts remain the default despite being the least relevant site. Engineered bone marrow niches, liver-on-chip with resident macrophages, and perfused lung and brain models can be seeded with patient tumour cells to study colonisation, dormancy and organ-specific drug response. Organ-specific microenvironments determine both seeding and treatment sensitivity.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Drug sensitivity of the same tumour cells differs substantially between organ-mimicking niches, and niche-specific results predict site-specific clinical response better than subcutaneous models.
- Rationale: Clinically, responses differ by metastatic site (for example liver metastases predict poor immunotherapy benefit), which no subcutaneous model can represent.
- Proposed test: Test three agents against matched tumour cells in bone, liver and lung niche models and compare with site-specific response data from clinical imaging cohorts.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: engineering

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (Lab models that fail to predict what happens in patients): Wong, Siah & Lo, Estimation of clinical trial success rates (Biostatistics 2019): https://doi.org/10.1093/biostatistics/kxx069

## Connected records

- technologies: [Patient-derived organoids](https://onco.cc/technologies/organoids/), [Patient-derived xenografts](https://onco.cc/technologies/pdx-models/)
- terms: [Oligometastatic disease](https://onco.cc/terms/oligometastatic/)
- bottlenecks: [Lab models that fail to predict what happens in patients](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-preclinical-models/), [Metastasis is understood least and studied last](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-metastasis-biology/)
- key papers: [Estimation of clinical trial success rates and related parameters](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-wong-biostatistics/)

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