Thermo Fisher Scientific, the world leader in serving science, has announced the launch of the Gibco™ OncoPro™ Tumoroid Culture Medium Kit, the first commercially available culture medium specifically developed for the expansion of patient-derived tumoroids, or cancer organoids, from multiple cancer indications.

While cancer remains a leading cause of death globally, hurdles remain in bringing new cancer therapies to patients, with up to 97% of drug candidates failing in clinical trials. More closely resembling donor tissue than traditional 2D cell models, patient-derived tumoroids – cultures of tumor cells derived from individual patients – hold promise in helping improve clinical trial success rates by enabling researchers to better model disease and predict patient response to therapeutics in vitro.

Yet use of tumoroids in cancer research has been limited due to challenging culture requirements and a lack of commercially available media systems. American supplier Thermo Fisher’s new off-the-shelf, modular tumoroid culture medium kit is designed to make complex cancer models more accessible to researchers.