SBIR-STTR Award

Lung Cancer is the leading cause of cancer related death worldwide The most common form Non small cell lung cancer NSCLC accounts for over of lung cancer related deaths In recent years patient derived xenograft PDX models have been established for various cancers and these models are increasingly used for preclinical studies of targeted therapies Such studies highlight the ability of PDX models to better predict clinical tumor response compared to standard cell line derived xenograft models Furthermore PDX models also provides the opportunity to tailor treatments to specific tumor genotypes phenotypes The latest therapeutic strategies only show a minimal increase in NSCLC survivorship of greater year survival rate The majority of patients that receive first line treatment are not good candidates for further chemotherapy due to disease progression drug resistance side effects severe toxicity and effects of comorbidity The economic and survival rate impact of post first line chemotherapy for NSCLC presents thecrucial need to optimize the selection of initial chemotherapy regimen Here we propose to develop and characterize at least PDX lines from NSCLC tumors derived from minoritypopulations tumor specimens obtained from patients that belong to Appalachian region African descent or Asian descent will be transplanted into NOD SCID mice and SRG rats and serially transplanted for generation passages to establish NSCLC PDX lines that can be effectively grown in SCID rodents