Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a challenging disease, with a high mortality rate and limited effective treatment options, particularly for late-stage disease. Historically, human CRC cell lines have been used in vitro and in vivo for pre-clinical drug trials; however, cell lines only partially recapitulate the molecular diversity, genetic signature, and heterogeneity of CRC tumors. Patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) have emerged as an informative, renewable experimental resource to model CRC architecture and biology.
PDX models have been reported to more accurately reflect the patient tumors from which they were derived in terms of morphology, tissue architecture, and mutational stability. PDX models are now considered to provide a superior experimental model system of pre-clinical drug responses. This article describes the generation of a PDX biobank from stage I-IV chemotherapy-naive CRC tumors.
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