[Sportschosun Reporter Jang Jong-ho] Yoon Jong-hyuk, a professor of surgery at Soonchunhyang University Cheonan Hospital, recently received the Best Oral Presentation Award at the 2026 international conference of the Korean Gastric Cancer Association, Korea International Gastric Cancer Week 2026 (KINGCA WEEK 2026), held at Lotte Hotel Seoul.
Professor Yoon received the award for presenting a study titled "Multi-omic profiling reveals genomic divergence and stem-like subclonal selection in gastric cancer patient-derived organoids."
Patient-derived organoids (PDOs) are a type of "mini-tumor" created by culturing a patient's cancer tissue. They are used in precision medicine for personalized treatment, including to predict responses to anticancer drugs by reflecting the characteristics of actual tumors.
Professor Yoon compared 15 organoids obtained from 13 gastric cancer patients with their primary tumors and normal tissue through whole-exome sequencing (WES) and single-cell analysis. The study found genomic discordance, in which the organoids showed genetic mutation patterns different from those of the original tumors, in approximately 47% of the organoids from the early stages of culture.
In particular, the study newly confirmed that these differences were not caused by new mutations. Instead, they resulted from the selective proliferation during culture of stem-like cells that had originally existed as a minority population in the tumors.
Professor Yoon Jong-hyuk said, "The process of verifying how well patient-derived organoids reflect the characteristics of the original tumor is important," adding, "Genomic concordance needs to be checked as part of quality control before organoids are used in precision medicine, and I will continue follow-up research to enhance their clinical utility."
Jang Jong-ho, Reporter bellho@sportschosun.com
This article has been translated by GripLabs Mingo AI.
