Interestingly, the word organoid initially had a different meaning from all of the above. In the 1950s and 1960s, papers referring to organoids often centered on intracellular structures (organelles), with titles such as “Quantitative cine analysis of cell organoid activity” (Pomerat et al., 1954) or “Nuclear and cytoplasmic organoids in the living cell” (Duryee and Doherty, 1954). The word organoid was used also for tumors (Gordienko, 1964) or abnormal cellular growths (Wolter, 1967). Many papers described cases of “Organoid Nevus,” a malformation of the skin, most commonly in the scalp (Pinkus, 1976). Other researchers seemed to use organoids for cellular clusters that maintained the structural characteristics of the tissue of origin. For instance, Schneider et al. (1963), in a paper titled “Some unusual observations of organoid tissues and blood elements in monolayer cultures,” observed organoids as 1-mm nodules attached to the flask or floating after mechanical and enzymatic digestion of mammalian tissues. From 1980 on, however, papers referring to 3D cultures included the use of the word organoids.
