Table 2.

Main advantages and limitations of PCTS.

Advantages	Limitations
Retain the 3D architecture of the original tumor, including stromal and immune cell compartments.	Lack of vascularization does not permit long-term culture
Quick, easy, and relatively inexpensive to generate and culture	Cannot currently be frozen or biobanked
Allow studies on the immunobiology of tumors	Any experiments need to fit within the short-term culture timeframe of ~one week
Drug screening of immunotherapeutic agents is possible	Low throughput platform with no direct multi-omics possible
Permit several assay applications following culture (IHC, flow cytometry, confocal, microscopy, sequencing and supernatant readouts)	Inter- and intra-tumoral heterogeneity observed
	Organ/tumor-specific transcriptional changes observed following slicing