Abstract
High-throughput experiments, unidirectional fluid replacement, real-time process monitoring, and simultaneous drug sensitivity and toxicity tests are hard to achieve on most existing tumor organoid chips. Here, we developed a gravity-driven organoid perfusion (GDOP) platform facilitating scalable throughput and supporting drug sensitivity and toxicity assessment on organoids. The unidirectional perfusion capability and optimized operational parameters of the GDOP chip were validated through fluid dynamics simulations. Using this platform, we successfully established uniform on-chip triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) organoids, with endpoint detection results aligning closely with clinical diagnosis. Throughout the drug treatment process, we monitored and then analyzed the morphological and grayscale changes of the organoids. The sensitivity and toxicity tests revealed the optimal concentration range for the 3 chemotherapeutic drugs. In addition, on-chip brain organoids were established, which lays a feasible foundation for future drug toxicity tests of complex organoids. The GDOP platform, combined with its integrated evaluation method, provides a powerful and reliable approach for advancing organoid-based researches.
Data availability
All the data in this study are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author. Source data for 840 sample datasets of organoid dimension and grayscale obtained by image recognition are available in Supplementary Data 1. Source data underlying graphs can be obtained from Supplementary Data 2.
Code availability
The code and training results of the developed model have been deposited to GitHub repository (https://github.com/yesterdayzxl/organoidRecognizatrion).
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the patients for their participation in this study.This work was supported by Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province, China, ZR2023QE236; the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDC0250301, XDB1150101); 2023 National Health Commission Key Laboratory Special Project (Grant No. 23GSSYA19).
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S.W. and J.W.—Conceptualization; S.W., H.M., and J.W.—Methodology; S.W., J.W.—Investigation; S.W., H.J., X.C., T.Y., and Y.B.—Validation; S.W. and H.J.—Visualization; S.W., T.Y., and H.M.—Formal analysis; S.W. and T.Y.—Data curation; S.W. and X.Z.—Software; T.Y., J.W., and G.L.—Funding acquisition; J.W. and G.L.—Resources; L.L., J.W., and G.L.—Project administration; J.W., T.Y., and G.L.—Supervision; S.W., H.M., and X.Z.—Writing—original draft; X.C., T.Y., J.W., and G.L.—Writing—review and editing; All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Wang, S., Zhang, X., Ma, H. et al. A compatible gravity-driven organoid perfusion (GDOP) platform for drug screening with sensitivity and toxicity process evaluation. Commun Biol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-09973-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-026-09973-5
