The Human Cancer Models Initiative has developed 665 new cancer tissue models derived from patient tumors.
The models cover 25 cancer types and were generated from 2,780 donors over a 10-year, NCI-funded effort, according to a study published in Nature.
“Since the sequencing of the human genome and the analysis of cancer genomes over the last 20 years, we have had many ideas about cancer targets, but we need experimental systems in the lab to validate those targets and launch drug discovery projects,” Jesse Boehm, a research scientist at the Koch Institute and senior author of the study, said.
The models are now available to cancer researchers worldwide, giving hospital and health system oncology programs a broader set of tools for testing drug targets and studying treatment resistance across understudied cancer types.
Most of the models are organoids, three-dimensional cell cultures grown from patient tumor tissue that can be maintained indefinitely while replicating the genetic and molecular features of the original cancer. The resource includes 522 models with full clinical data, 153 models representing rare cancers and 71 models from donors of non-European ancestry.
The initiative was led by scientists at MIT’s Koch Institute, the Broad Institute, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the National Cancer Institute.
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