Scientific Reports - Although an array of new therapeutics has emerged for the treatment of colorectal cancer, their use is significantly impacted by variability in patient response. Better pre-clinical models could substantially improve efficacy as it may allow stratification of patients into the correct treatment regime.

In this study, a group of British researchers explored acute, ex vivo treatment of fresh, surgically resected human colorectal tumour biopsies as a novel pre-clinical model for identifying patient response to specific therapeutics.

These data suggest that acute treatment of small tumour biopsies is worthy of further exploration as a pre-clinical model to evaluate colorectal cancer response to novel therapies.

 

Ex vivo treatment of patient biopsies as a novel method to assess colorectal tumour response to the MEK1/2 inhibitor, Selumetinib

 

Authors: Sonia M. Novo, Stephen R. Wedge & Lesley A. Stark

Scientific Reports - doi:10.1038/s41598-017-12222-9 -  20 September 2017