NCT/UCC Functional Diagnostics Unit
Recent technological and clinical advances have opened new opportunities for personalized medicine. The time sensitive identification of individual tumor profiles enables stratification of patients for optimal oncological, surgical and radiotherapeutic therapy approaches including novel immunotherapeutic or targeted treatment. To further improve patient stratification in precision oncology, an additional functional layer of information on top of molecular data is needed: the response of patient-derived tumor models to treatments. These models faithfully recapitulate the phenotypical and molecular characteristics of their tissue of origin. This allows ranking of potentially effective drugs/treatment regimens according to their efficacy and gain novel insights into the functional relevance of novel alterations. It also allows the study of pathway specific alterations and their effects inside signaling or resistance networks, among the same or across different tissue entities.
To systematically establish patient derived pre-clinical models for functional testing, the Functional Diagnostics Unit (FDU) was established as a central platform to expand and focus these efforts at NCT/UCC Dresden. Within the FDU, the Patient-derived Tumor Model Unit (PMU) aims to generate well characterized patient-derived tumor models, conduct a dedicated drug library screen and provide them to researchers from the NCT as a basis for functional analysis and stratification of patients in precision oncology and preclinical research. The PMU bundles model generation expertise within a dedicated and partially automatized lab which perfectly synergizes with the existing platforms at the NCT/UCC Dresden. In order to implement patient-derived tumor models into clinical decision making, the FDU is currently building up a Clinical Trial Laboratory (CTL) as a testing laboratory for clinical studies. The goal is to validate patient-derived tumor models as avatars of patient response to individualized treatments in the near future.
Service
Allocation of deeply characterized three-dimensional cell culture models from various cancer tissues as well as corresponding normal tissues.
Methods
- Organoid/Spheroid cultivation
- Drug screens
- Histological characterization
- Molecular characterization
Heads
Dr. Claudia Ball
Translational Medical Oncology
National Center for Tumor Diseases Dresden
Prof. Daniel Stange
Department of Visceral-, Thoracic- and Vascular Surgery
Medical Faculty Carl Gustav Carus, TU Dresden
Scientific Coordination
Dr. Ivona Mateska
Patient-derived Tumor Model Unit
Phone: +49 (0)351 458-11382
Email: ivona.mateska(at)nct-dresden.de
Dr. Julia Reinhardt
Functional Diagnostics
Phone: +49 (0)351 458-17910
Email: julia.reinhardt(at)nct-dresden.de
Staff
Saskia Stegert
Patient-derived Tumor Model Unit
National Center for Tumor Diseases Dresden
Angela Sauer
Patient-derived Tumor Model Unit
National Center for Tumor Diseases Dresden
Caroline Rudolph
Patient-derived Tumor Model Unit
National Center for Tumor Diseases Dresden
Katja Thiele
Patient-derived Tumor Model Unit
National Center for Tumor Diseases Dresden
Masoud Koochak
Patient-derived Tumor Model Unit
National Center for Tumor Diseases Dresden
Haifa Parkar
Patient-derived Tumor Model Unit
National Center for Tumor Diseases Dresden