Back

Age-dependent chemotherapy response and vitamin D impact in paired patient-derived normal and tumor colorectal organoids

Fernandez-Barral, A.; Barbachano, A.; Rodriguez-Marrero, S.; del Peso, L.; Herreros-Cabello, A.; Rodriguez-Salas, N.; Prieto, I.; Burgos, A.; Leon-Arellano, M.; Garcia-Olmo, D.; Olleros, T.; Gonzalez-Sancho, J. M.; Larriba, M. J.; Munoz, A.

2025-12-17 cancer biology
10.64898/2025.12.15.694334 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Early-onset colorectal cancer (EO-CRC, <50 years) incidence is rising worldwide. Using paired patient-derived colorectal normal and tumor organoids, we demonstrate the therapeutic window of three standard chemotherapies. Normal organoids were more resistant than tumor organoids to 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and oxaliplatin in both EO-CRC and late-onset CRC (LO-CRC) patients. However, for SN38, this therapeutic window was observed in LO-CRC but not in EO-CRC patients, revealing age-dependent differences in drug resistance. We also evaluated the effect of calcitriol, the active vitamin D metabolite with anti-CRC activity, on drug sensitivity. Calcitriol reduced the cytotoxicity of 5-FU and SN38 in normal organoids regardless of patient age, while it selectively decreased their cytotoxicity in EO-CRC but not in LO-CRC tumor organoids. This protective effect correlated with calcitriol antiproliferative action and transcriptional effects on drug-metabolism pathways. These findings identify clinically relevant age-dependent differences in chemotherapy response and support vitamin D-based strategies to design age-tailored precision treatments.

Matching journals

The top 7 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.