Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental MedicineWe optimize patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models for representative preclinical testing
Our commitment is to develop advanced preclinical PDX models to enable improved prediction of the pharmaceutical efficacy and adverse effects of drugs in vivo.
Our scientific approach enables the development of individualized preclinical models to investigate tumor development and dissemination of patient-derived tumor cells in the presence of a human immune system.
Preclinical animal models only partially represent the patient situation. Main disadvantages include the species barrier, the lack of immune cells in xenograft models, and the use of aggressive cell lines. Fraunhofer ITEM in Regensburg is developing optimized PDX models allowing more representative preclinical drug testing. Our advanced models are based on patient-derived metastatic precursor cells (disseminated tumor cells, DTCs) or circulating tumor cells (CTCs). In addition, we concomitantly generate a human immune system in these mice, which infiltrates the human tumors and develops phenotypes (e.g. tumor-associated macrophages) that have been described in patient samples. This allows both the tumor development and the dissemination of cancer cells into different organs to be followed in the presence of human immune cells. Our services include development of individualized preclinical in-vivo models to test in particular immunomodulatory drugs on target cells of systemic disease.
