Objective To understand the development, research status, advantages and disadvantages of patient-derived organoid (PDO) and patient-derived tumor xenograft (PDX), and to summarize their applications in pancreatic cancer, so as to provide new ideas for the selection of early modeling of pancreatic cancer. Method The recent studies on PDO and PDX of pancreatic cancer at home and abroad were reviewed. Results The PDO and PDX models had a wide range of applications in preclinical research of tumor, especially played an important role in the basic research of present pancreatic cancer patients with poor clinical treatment effects, such as the pathogenesis research of pancreatic cancer, developing new targets and new drugs, testing preclinical drug toxicity and effectiveness. Conclusion PDO and PDX, as classical tumor research model, have broad clinical application prospects in the research of pancreatic cancer.