Patient-derived organoids at different time points of therapy

We derive organoids from the primary dissociated cells obtain from freshly resected breast tumors.

Patient-derived organoids are three-dimensional in vitro models, initially grown from a patient cancer cells. They mimic the phenotype of the primary tumor and several studies demonstrated that they recapitulate features of primary tumors, including histological complexity and genetic heterogeneity

We obtain these ex-vivo patient cultures from two clinical trials, the NeoLetExe and NeoLetRib, in which locally advanced ER+ breast cancer patients are treated in the neoadjuvant setting.

In our lab, when primary breast tumors biopsies are withdrawn and enzymatically digested, up to 25.000 cells are used for single cell RNA-seq. On the same day and with the same pool of dissociated cells, 50.000 – 150.000 cells are used to generate organoids.

We first aim at carefully biobanking such patient-derived organoids at different time point of therapy. We will also have the opportunity to test ex-vivo treatment strategies which we predict to be more efficient at the individual patient level based on the information obtained from single cell RNA sequencing.