MatTek scientists will be attending and presenting a poster at the AACR Annual Meeting 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. Our scientists are presenting a poster on new research, applications, and tissue models. Read more to see what we’ve been working on and request copies of our posters. We can’t wait to see you at AACR 2025!
Meet our team at Booth #5015Â
We’d love to chat: Schedule a Meeting
Poster Presentations:
Large scale in vitro expansion of primary tumors from metastasis cancer patients with different mutations for preclinical drug screening.
Seyoum Ayehunie, PhD (1), Megan Groves,BSc (2), Dylan Bryda, MSc (1), Mateo Frare, MSc (1), Alex Armento, MSc (1), Anthony Tolcher, MD (2)
1 MatTek Corporation, Ashland, MA 01760, and 2Next Oncology, San Antonio, Texas
Abstract
The use of patient derived primary tumors (PDPT) is becoming a powerful vitro tool in candidate cancer drug screening for safety and efficacy. Compared to 2D cell lines, the PDPTs can 1) better recapitulate the human tumor microenvironment (TME), 2) predict drug responses in humans, 3) be used in high throughput drug screening platforms to test dose responses and drug-drug interactions, and 4) ultimately, be used in precision medicine. However, adoption of PDPTs has been hindered by challenges related to in vitro tumor cell growth and expansion without inducing phenotypic changes. Here, we present a novel method for in vitro PDPT expansion and tumoroid biobanking for high throughput drug screening for metastasized cancers. We have combined a specialized matrix coated plates with that of microwell technology to scale-up in vitro tumor cell growth and expansion. In this study we introduced two assay systems for screening of drugs/compounds: a) expanded colorectal cancer (CRC) tumoroids as a stand-alone test system and b) reconstructed complex 3D human tumor models embedded in matrix containing fibroblasts, endothelial cells, and immune cells to mimic the TME. To examine the utility of organoids, single tumor cells were seeded on to ULA plate to form tumoroids. Epithelial origin of the cancer was checked by CK19 staining. Then Tumoroids were exposed to 4 chemotherapeutic drugs Oxaliplatin, Fluorouracil, Cisplatin, and Cetuximab for 96 hours. After treatment cycle, tumoroids were immunostained with dyes to monitor cell viability and cell death. The results showed that: 1) large scale expansion of PDPT is achievable, 2) PDPT can be cultured with multiple cell types to simulate the TME, 3) histological evaluation of the tumor grown in TME presents a glandular-like tumoroid structure for CRC, 4) the CRC cells maintain epithelial origin as demonstrated by immunohistochemical staining for CK19, and 5) differential dose dependent drug responses as demonstrated by live dead staining. Additionally, a by-standard cell death effect was noted for some of the drugs (data not shown).
In summary, large-scale in vitro tumoroid expansion is critical to scale up metastasis cancer drug screening. The developed assay systems are more physiological, cost effective, less time-consuming, better predictive of drug responses
