A High-Fidelity and Ancestrally Inclusive Patient-Derived Organoid Platform Resolves Cancer Cell Plasticity in Uterine Carcinosarcoma

Abstract

Uterine carcinosarcoma (UCS) is a rare but extremely lethal endometrial cancer that metastasizes early and resists current treatment modalities. It is biphasic, built from malignant epithelial and mesenchymal cells. Genomic studies indicate that these tumors are clonal, and that the mesenchymal cells arise from the epithelial cells through cancer cell plasticity. This biology has been hard to study, because faithful patient-derived models are scarce. The gap is widened by inequity. Women of African ancestry carry the greatest burden of UCS, yet are underrepresented in existing models. To address this, we established patient-derived organoids (PDOs) from an ancestrally inclusive UCS cohort, alongside matched normal endometrial PDOs. The organoids reproduced the biphasic histology of the original tumors. Across four sequencing platforms, they retained the tumor mutation and copy-number landscape, remained stable across passages, and expanded for up to 28 months. At single-cell resolution, UCS PDOs captured both malignant compartments and traced continuous transcriptional trajectories along the epithelial-to-mesenchymal axis, capturing patient-specific cancer cell plasticity. The models also nominated candidate vulnerabilities in proof-of-concept therapeutic testing. UCS PDOs were enriched for CREB-family transcriptional programs, and CREB inhibition reduced their viability. Combined FGFR and YAP inhibition outperformed either agent alone. Together, this work delivers a histologically, genomically, and transcriptionally faithful, ancestrally inclusive, and lineage-resolved UCS organoid platform for studying cancer cell plasticity and its vulnerabilities in an aggressive and inequitably burdened cancer.