NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – The Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai and Champions Oncology today announced the start of a clinical trial to evaluate the use of the firm's Champions TumorGrafts technology in 100 patients with triple-negative breast cancer.
The study includes a side-by-side genomic analysis of patient tumors and TumorGraft mouse avatars before and after treatment. Champions TumorGrafts are used to guide physician treatment decisions for cancer patients. A sample of a patient's living tumor is removed during surgery or biopsy and engrafted in immune-deficient mice. While the TumorGraft grows, Champions Oncology tests drug treatments in the TumorGraft, measuring the responses.
As part of the study announced today, researches will create TumorGrafts and genomically analyze tissue from the initial biopsies. The patients will undergo traditional neo-adjuvant therapy and resection therapy, and clinical genomics methods will be applied to analyze the tissue obtained from the resection and the TumorGraft mouse avatars. A comparison will follow to assess how closely the TumorGrafts resemble the patients' progress.
The TumorGrafts will also be used to create a tumor bank for future drug research and development in order to advance therapies for patients who are resistant to the standard of care, the partners said.
"This is our largest study in the use of our TumorGrafts in a specific cancer type to date, and is designed to show the high predictability of the mouse avatars for triple-negative breast cancer patients, as well as further demonstrate the close resemblance of TumorGrafts to a patient's tumor, even over time," Champions Oncology President Ronnie Morris, said in a statement.
Principal investigators from the Dubin Breast Cancer and Icahn Institute for Genomics are heading the study at Mt. Sinai. The project is being coordinated through the Tisch Cancer Institute.