SC21.04 Patient-Derived Xenografts for Guiding Therapy of Lung Cancer

Abstract

Preclinical drug screening and biomarker discovery in the NCI-60 cancer cell line panel as well as the xenograft developed by growing these cell lines subcutaneously in immunodeficient mice have repeatedly failed to predict clinical responses. In an attempt to circumvent the limited predictive values of conventional preclinical models, there has been increasing attention in the development and characterization of Patient-derived tumor xenograft (PDX) models. The PDX models, which were created by direct implantation of patient’s tumor in immunodeficient mice, have shown to reflect principal histologic and genetic characteristics of original patient tumors and retain tumor heterogeneity better than any other preclinical model. These models have been shown to be predictive of clinical outcomes and are being used for translational research, preclinical drug screening and biomarker identification and validation. The PDX model may also be used in the application of ‘co-clinical trial’ approach, in which it is developed from a patient enrolled in a clinical trial and treated with the same experimental agents to emulate clinical response. This strategy permits the assessment of drug response simultaneously in the patient and mouse model, providing an interesting platform to investigate resistance mechanism, predictive biomarkers and novel combination strategies in a real-time manner. I will present the utility of PDX models, which faithfully replicated the histologic, genomic and pharmacologic features observed in the original patients, and ‘co-clinical trial’ that mirror a phase II trial of agents targeting fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) in non-small cell lung cancer. Predictive biomarker, patient-derived tumor xenograft, co-clinical trial