Stanford University Researchers Use Mouse Colon Organoids to Validate Oncogenic Driver of Colorectal Cancer

In a study published in Nature Medicine, CTD² investigators modeled colorectal cancer in primary organoids derived from mouse colon. They used the organoid system to functionally study Insulin-like Growth Factor 2 (IGF2) and miR-483, which are found on a common amplicon in some colorectal cancer cases surveyed by The Cancer Genome Atlas. Previous studies suggested that IGF2 was the transforming gene on this amplicon; surprisingly, data in this study from Li and others revealed that miR-483 is the oncogenic driver.