Fig. 2.

The applications of hPSC-based cancer modeling. iPSCs derived from patient cells or tumor samples, together with genetically engineered hPSCs with cancer-associated alterations undergo directed differentiation into cells of interest that represent the likely cancer cell-of-origin. These cells can be used to generate 3D tumor organoids under appropriate conditions. The hPSC-derived cancer models can be used in a variety of cancer studies including chemical screening for drug discovery, genetic screening to identify biomarkers and molecular mechanisms, as well as for the investigation of intra-tumoral heterogeneity by single cell sequencing and multi-omics profiling. The lower left image of biomarker identification was adapted from (Kim et al., 2013).