TABLE 1.

Comparison of 3D organoid culture with conventional cell cultures and animal models (Shanks et al., 2009; Yin et al., 2016; Kaushik et al., 2018; Lehmann et al., 2019; Mead and Karp, 2019; Moghaddam et al., 2019; Corrò et al., 2020; Duque-Correa et al., 2020; Fuchs and Blau, 2020; Kim et al., 2020; Hofer and Lutolf, 2021; Kar et al., 2021; Pain, 2021).

	2D cell culture	3D organoid culture	Animal models
Complexity	Low	Medium	High
Cost	Low	Low to medium	High
Manipulability and reproducibility	More uniformly controlled	Good, but may have more variability	Limited due to individual variation
Genome stability and biobanking	Genome instability	Yes	Yes at cellular level
Genome/gene editing	Yes	Yes	Yes, only using embryonic stem cells
Physiologic recapitulation	Limited	Semiphysiologic	Physiologic
Vascularization and system integration	No	Partial	Yes
Modeling organogenesis	Poor	Effective in modeling intra-organ cell-cell interaction and core morphogenesis	Yes, but often complicated by organismal complex
Modeling development and diseases in Animals	Poor, due to over-simplicity vs. animal body system	Yes, at organ level	Yes, genuine self if use same species
Modeling development and diseases in humans	Poor, due to over-simplicity and species-specificity	Partially, critical to model and study shared diseases and zoonotic infections	Yes, comparable holistic model