A New Resource for Cancer Research: What It Means for Patients
A new paper published in Nature, "A Compendium of Next-Generation Patient-Derived Models for Diverse Cancer," marks an important milestone for cancer research. This announcement is an important milestone for cancer research because it demonstrates how patient-donated tissue can become a powerful resource that accelerates discoveries for people around the world.
Why this matters:
Researchers have created nearly 700 new cancer models representing 25 different cancer types, including many rare cancers that previously had little or no representation in laboratories. These models were developed directly from patient tumor samples and are now available to researchers globally.
The project builds on the work of the Human Cancer Models Initiative (HCMI) and dramatically expands the tools available to scientists who are trying to identify new drug targets and develop more effective therapies.
What are cell line and organoid models?
Cell lines and organoids are laboratory-grown models created from tissue donated by patients. Scientists use them to understand how cancers grow, spread, and respond to treatments. Scientists can maintain these models in the laboratory for extended periods, allowing them to study cancer biology in much greater detail.
Why rare cancers benefit so much:
For common cancers, researchers may have dozens or even hundreds of laboratory models available. For rare cancers, researchers often have very few, or none at all. This is where RCRF helped the project through the use of our pattern.org platform. Rare cancer patients from across the country donated tissue samples that were sent to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard as part of this project. This is especially meaningful because the researchers emphasized that existing collections have historically underrepresented rare cancers and diverse patient populations.
Every additional tissue donation can help scientists:
Better understand the biology of a disease.
Identify patterns across patients.
Discover biomarkers.
Test new drugs.
Develop more personalized therapies.
The journey from patient to discovery:
The process generally looks like this:
A patient consents to donate tissue.
A hospital collects the sample.
Traditionally, the sample is sent to a research lab at that hospital but samples collected through pattern.org can be sent to almost any research lab across the country.
Scientists establish an organoid or cell line.
Researchers characterize the sample's DNA, RNA, and other molecular features.
Thousands of experiments are performed to identify vulnerabilities that might be targeted by new therapies.
Patients Are at the Center of This Progress:
This work reinforces a simple but powerful truth: patients already possess the two things researchers need most—tissue and data. When patients, clinicians, biobanks, and scientists work together, discoveries can happen much faster.
Click here to read the scientific article.