Patient-derived Human Breast Cancer Xenografts

Breast cancer research is hampered by difficulties in obtaining and studying primary human breast tissue, and by the lack of in vivo preclinical models that reflect patient tumor biology accurately. To overcome these limitations, we propagated a cohort of human breast tumors grown in the epithelium-free mammary fat pad of SCID/Beige and NOD/SCID/IL2-receptor null (NSG) mice, under a series of transplant conditions. Both models yielded stably transplantable xenografts at comparably high rates (~23% and ~19%, respectively). Of the conditions tested, xenograft take rate was highest in the presence of a low-dose estradiol pellet. Overall, 32 stably transplantable xenograft lines were established, representing unique 25 patients. Most tumors yielding xenografts were triple-negative (ER-PR-HER2+) (n=19). However, we established lines from three ER-PR-HER2+ tumors, one ER+PR-HER2-, one ER+PR+HER2- and one triple-positive (ER+PR+HER2+) tumor. Serially passaged xenografts show biological consistency with the tumor of origin, are phenotypic stability across multiple transplant generations at the histological, transcriptomic, proteomic, and genomic levels, and show comparable treatment responses. Xenografts representing 12 patients, including two ER+ lines, showed metastasis to the mouse lung. These models thus serve as a renewable, quality-controlled tissue resource for preclinical studies investigating treatment response and metastasis.

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Zhang X, Claerhout S, Prat A, Dobrolecki LE, Petrovic I, Lai Q, Landis MD, Wiechmann L, Schiff R, Giuliano M, Wong H, Fuqua SW, Contreras A, Gutierrez C, Huang J, Mao S, Pavlick AC, Froehlich AM, Wu MF, Tsimelzon A, Hilsenbeck SG, Chen ES, Zuloaga P, Shaw CA, Rimawi MF, Perou CM, Mills GB, Chang JC, Lewis MT