Translational Research

The ability to recapitulate the complexities of solid human tumors for the purposes of drug development and testing has been, and remains, a major obstacle in the progress of cancer care. Despite great efforts expended on pre-clinical optimization using existing validation models, most drugs simply fail to demonstrate efficacy when subjected to phase III clinical trial scrutiny. Our interpretation is that the currently available model systems lack the appropriate clinical predictive power. The reasons for the inadequacies of these model systems, which are largely based upon cell lines, mouse models or patient-derived xenografts, are myriad but are almost certainly related to the absence of the human stromal component and its intricate relationship with tumor cells. Indeed, modeling the multi-faceted interactions between human cancer cells and the multitude of various stromal components, including activated fibroblasts, immune cell infiltrate and the abnormal vasculature is, at present, an impossibility. We hypothesize that the advent of a system capable keeping intact human tumors viable in an ex vivo setting carries broad implications across many fields of investigational medicine and brings with it the potential to fundamentally alter the translational research landscape. Moreover, given that this system is based on a patient’s tumor, the benefits of personalized medicine could leap from generating lists of potentially useful drugs to designation of efficacious agents for that patient. The Hernandez lab has begun to satisfy the requirements of an ideal, translational human tumor system with the use of two innovative platforms and tumor straight from the operating room.