Abstract 6028: Patient derived organoids demonstrate hallmark characteristics of small cell lung cancer

Abstract

Abstract Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) accounts for approximately 15% of all lung cancers with an overall 5-year survival rate of 5-10%. Although transgenic mouse models and patient derived xenograft models have been shown to capture the heterogeneity and complexity of SCLC, the costs involved and timeframe of generating these models can be extensive. Furthermore, these models lack the ability to study the patients’ immune components and tumor microenvironment. Alternatively, in other cancer types in vitro methods to generate organoids have been successful in the hope to develop personalized patient derived organoids for screening and further downstream analyses. Here, we have generated and characterized small cell lung cancer patient-derived tumor organoids and confirmed that the organoids possess similar molecular characteristics, genetic profiles and morphological architectures to the corresponding patient tumor tissue. Organoids were shown to express hallmark features for SCLC, which included expression of neuroendocrine markers CD56, CHGA, INSM1 and SYP shown by immunohistochemistry. We suggest utilizing these organoids as SCLC patient models would be ideal for investigating the tumor microenvironment in SCLC, mechanisms between tumor immune cell interactions as well as assessing patients’ responses to therapy. Citation Format: Joshua D'Rozario, Julie George, Roman Thomas. Patient derived organoids demonstrate hallmark characteristics of small cell lung cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2022; 2022 Apr 8-13. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2022;82(12_Suppl):Abstract nr 6028.