A new scaffold-free tumoroid model provides a robust preclinical tool to investigate invasion and drug response in Renal Cell Carcinoma

Clear cell Renal Cell Carcinoma (ccRCC) is one of the most prevalent kidney cancers, which is often asymptomatic and thus discovered at a metastatic state (mRCC). mRCC are highly heterogeneous tumors composed of subclonal populations that lead to poor treatment response rate. Several recent works explored the potential of ccRCC tumoroids culture derived from patients. However, these models were produced following a scaffold-based method using collagen I or Matrigel that exhibit lot variability and whose complexity could induce treatment response modifications and phenotypic alterations. Following the observation that ccRCC tumoroids can create their own niche by secreting extracellular matrix components, we developed the first scaffold-free tumoroid model of ccRCC tumors. Tumoroids from mice as well as from human tumors were generated with high success rate (≥90%) using a magnetic suspension method and standard culture media. Immunofluorescence analysis revealed their self-organization capacities to maintain multiple tumor-resident cell types, including endothelial progenitor cells. Transcriptomic analysis showed the reproducibility of the method highlighting that the majority of gene expression patterns was conserved in tumoroids compared to their matching tumor tissue. Moreover, this model enables to evaluate drug effects and invasiveness of renal cancer cells in a 3D context, providing a robust preclinical tool for drug screening and biomarker assessment in line with alternative ex vivo methods like tumor tissue slice culture or in vivo xenograft models.