NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) — Lung cancer patient advocacy group LUNGevity Foundation announced today that it has joined an alliance to help expand the Broad Institute's Cancer Cell Line Project (CCLP) for the development of next-generation research models.
Through the arrangement, Chicago-based LUNGevity will promote the donation of excess lung cancer tissue and fluid samples from patients undergoing surgical resection or drainage for pleural effusion to non-profit Pattern.org, which coordinates the biologistics of sample collection and delivery to the CCLP.
The cell line and organoid models developed by the CCLP, as well as associated data, will be made broadly available to the scientific community.
"A major goal for lung cancer research is to predict the vulnerabilities of each tumor based on its molecular profile," Jesse Boehm, scientific director of the Cancer Dependency Map at the Broad, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, researchers lack a sufficient number and diversity of lung cancer laboratory models in the public domain that harbor rare and drug-resistant mutations. We see this partnership as an exciting new way for patients to directly help researchers overcome this central challenge."