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Patient-derived Ovarian Cancer Xenografts

This OVCARE core facility is run by Dr. YZ Wang at the the Living Tumor Laboratory. The Wang group has developed a routine procedure for successfully grafting and serially transplanting primary human cancer tissues into immuno-deficient SCID mice. It is based on grafting patients’ biopsy or excised cancer tissue into the subrenal capsule graft site. The high vascularity of this site, compared to subcutaneous and orthotopic sites, allows more adequate supply of nutrients to the graft important for maintaining tumour heterogeneity. Using the effective xenografting methodology, the group has developed over 160 transplantable tumor tissue lines (> 44 are ovarian cancer models) in the Laboratory. The panel patient-derived cancer xenograft models  (i) retain key biological properties and molecular characteristics of the original specimen; (ii) cover major pathological and molecular sub-types of human cancers; (iii) functionally represent heterogeneous cancer populations in primary tumour. Importantly such xenograft models have been effectively applied in a number of research areas, such as (a) preclinical drug efficacy studies in anti-cancer therapeutics development, (b) discovery and validation of potential biomarkers and/or therapeutic targets, and (c) personalized cancer therapy.

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