Aims & Scope

This special issue aims to highlight recent advances in modeling the tumor microenvironment (TME) using organoid. Tumor organoids have emerged as powerful platforms for recapitulating the complex cellular, molecular, tissues, drugs, structural interactions. The ideal organoids can simulate or infinitely approach these characteristics of tissue or organs, such as cellular heterogeneity, gene protein expression spectrum, histopathological characteristics, genetic mutation background, and drug response characteristics. The ideal organoids can promote super benefits to cancer development, progression, and therapy response. One important component of preserving the heterogeneity and functionality of tumor organoids is the possession of the tumor immune microenvironment.

The popular tumor immunotherapy in recent years does not directly target tumor cells, but rather various aspects of the tumor immune microenvironment. Like these types of tumor immunotherapy, immune checkpoint inhibitors, adoptive cell transfer therapy, cancer vaccines, oncolytic virus therapy, cytokine therapy, and immunostimulatory agonist antibodies.

 The testing of immunotherapy drugs or therapies requires tumor organoids with an immune microenvironment to simulate and detect the effectiveness of drugs or therapies, promoting high consistency in safety, efficacy, and consistency between organoids and real organs.

Whether it is immunotherapy or other drugs or diagnostic methods, ideal tumor organoids are hoped to be as close as possible to the microecology and microenvironment of the patient's tumor in the real world, and to faithfully reproduce and replicate the patient's true situation as possible, serving as a natural substitute for human tissues and organs.

By integrating organoid technology with microenvironmental components—including stromal cells, immune populations, extracellular matrix, and biomechanical forces—researchers are gaining unprecedented insights into tumor biology and personalized oncology.

The issue will provide a forum for cutting-edge research and perspectives that advance organoid-based approaches to study tumor–microenvironment interactions, identify therapeutic vulnerabilities, and translate findings into clinical applications. We welcome both original research and review articles addressing biological, technological, and translational aspects.

Potential Topics include but are not limited to:

• Development of tumor organoid models incorporating stromal and immune components
• Methods for engineering extracellular matrix and biomechanical cues in organoid systems
• Organoid–immune co-culture models for immuno-oncology studies
• Patient-derived tumor organoids for personalized drug testing and biomarker discovery
• Modeling angiogenesis and vascular interactions within tumor organoids
• Multi-omics profiling of tumor organoids and their microenvironment
• Advances in organoid-on-a-chip and bioprinting technologies for tumor microenvironment modeling
• Applications of tumor organoid–TME models in precision oncology and drug screening
• Challenges and future directions in standardizing and scaling organoid-based TME models

Guest Editor:

Xinxin Han (Shanghai Lisheng Biotech；LiSheng Organ Regeneration X Lab, East China Institute of Biotechnology, Peking University)

E-mail: xxhan@sibs.ac.cn

Submission deadline: Sep. 30, 2026

All submissions to special issues will be evaluated prior to peer review and may be rejected if any of them do not fit the scope of the journal or do not meet the journal's standards for peer review. All articles of special issues will undergo full, independent peer review, in line with the journal's ethical and editorial policies outlined in its submission guidelines. There is no guarantee of acceptance, even for commissioned or invited papers. The journal's editorial team has final authority on editorial content.