Second People's Hospital of Yunnan Province

The development of antitumor drugs is affected by various unfavorable factors, including long cycles of research and development, large differences in drug efficacy in vivo, and efficacy differences in individuals. Patient-derived tumor organoids (PDTOs), a novel preclinical model in cancer research, are three-dimensional microstructures differentiated from stem cells, with the capability of self-organizing into micro-organs that resemble the original tumor tissues. They have been demonstrated to faithfully recapitulate the biological and molecular features of the original tumor while preserving the tumor heterogeneity. Recently, PDTOs show great potential in drug screening and new drug development. In this review, we overviewed the types of organoids, application of PDTOs in developing new drugs, as well as their challenges and opportunities to provide powerful insights into drug development.

AimsType 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) may lead to diabetes‐associated cognitive dysfunction (DACD). We aimed to develop an amide proton transfer‐weighted (APTw) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) biomarker to assist early identification of T2DM with DACD.Materials and MethodsThe study included 27 T2DM patients, comprising 19 with mild cognitive impairment (T2DM‐MCI) and 8 without (T2DM‐nMCI), along with 11 community‐based controls without MCI (CG‐nMCI). All participants completed neuropsychological tests and APTw‐MRI. We measured hippocampal APTw signal intensity (SI) in both groups, analysed its correlation with cognitive scores and assessed diagnostic performance using area under the curve (AUC).ResultsIn T2DM‐nMCI patients, left hippocampal head APTw SI showed a positive correlation with semantic verbal fluency (SVF; r = 0.770, R2 = 0.593, p = 0.025) but a negative correlation with Wechsler Memory Scale‐Digit Span Test‐Backward (r = −0.802, R2 = 0.643, p = 0.017). In T2DM‐MCI patients, left hippocampal head APTw SI positively correlated with SVF scores (r = 0.414, R2 = 0.172, p = 0.044), while left tail values showed negative associations with Trail‐Making Test‐A (r = −0.333, R2 = 0.111) and Auditory Verbal Learning Test‐Huashan version‐delayed recall (r = −0.376, R2 = 0.141, both p ≤ 0.021). The left hippocampal body demonstrated diagnostic potential for T2DM‐nMCI (AUC = 0.793, p = 0.045), while the left hippocampal head showed higher discriminative power for T2DM‐MCI (AUC = 0.732, p = 0.034).ConclusionsAPTw imaging suggested a spatially evolving pattern of hippocampal damage in T2DM, where the left body may show early alterations, with the left head potentially becoming more implicated upon MCI onset. These findings provide preliminary evidence supporting the potential of APTw as an early, non‐invasive biomarker for tracking neuropathological progression in DACD.