Abstract IA18: Development of targeted therapeutics using patient-derived xenografts

Clinically, breast cancers are divided into three distinct groups: those that express the estrogen hormone receptor (ER+) (which typically also express the progesterone hormone receptor (PR+), those that are amplified or overexpress the ErbB2 (HER2) oncogene (HER2+), and those that express none of these three markers (termed triple negative breast cancer TNBC). Unlike ER+ and HER2+ breast cancers, there are currently no targeted therapies against TNBC. Thus, the development of targeted therapies for TNBC is an active area of research.Entry into the clinical trial pipeline is a major milestone in the process of drug development. However, human clinical trials have several inherent limitations including high cost and long time horizon. Add to these limitations the fact that many promising targeted therapeutics enter into this pipeline without detailed knowledge of the patient population most likely to respond, and without knowledge of particular drug combinations that might be more efficacious than others. As a consequence, the inherent limitations combined with lack of knowledge leads to a high frequency of failure, with failure late in the process costing extraordinary amounts of time and money.In theory, many of the limitations of human trials can be overcome using an animal clinical trial platform that exploits collections of patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models that recapitulate much of the biology of the tumor of origin in the patient.Our laboratory has developed a larg...
Source: Molecular Cancer Research - Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Tags: Animal Models: Oral Presentations - Invited Abstracts Source Type: research