The aforementioned use and misuse of the word organoids appears to have contributed to significant divergence regarding when the organoid field began to develop. In a recent review, Clevers (2016) states that there was an initial increase in organoid research in the 1965 to 1985 period (Fig. 1, organoids, red squares), showing an astounding 563 papers in 1980. This number and the fact that the graph shows a sudden drop in 1985 surprised us and caught our attention. A close look at the papers referenced for this period shows that the PubMed search picked up many papers that included the word “organ,” but not necessarily “organoids.” A different search using “organoid” followed by the “text word” tag shows papers actually using the word “organoid” (Fig. 1, blue circles). This search, in a way, also overestimates the number of papers about organoids because the results encompass research on organoids as defined before 1980, which included small structures within the cells’ cytoplasm. From 1980, researchers began to use collagen and laminin-rich matrices to culture cells and organoids in 3D, and thus 3D
