Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, Director of Cell Biology at the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Principal Investigator at Muthuswamy Lab, Senthil K. Muthuswamy, Ph.D. is working to better understand the molecular biology of cancer and the most effective method of treating it by creating organoids from patient tumors. When cultured under the proper conditions, a sample of tissue from a patient's tumor will grow into a 3D structure that resembles the patient's tumor.

Once that's been accomplished, the organoid can be used to determine which drugs will most effectively treat the specific tumor at hand. This approach addresses one of the main challenges to chemotherapy and targeted therapy, which is that not all patients will respond to the same drug in the same way—even if they have the same type of cancer. Dr. Muthuswamy's lab is currently working with breast and pancreatic tumors.

On today's episode, you will learn:

• Why two people with a certain type of cancer respond differently to the same treatment
• What types of research are being done with the use of organoids
• What the next five years will bring for Dr. Muthuswamy's lab and organoid-based drug and immunotherapy research