Development of an Ex Vivo Drug Testing Platform for Recapitulating Gastric Cancer-specific Microenvironment

Abstract

Various studies have been conducted in the development of patient-derived xenograft (PDX) for investigating the efficacy of anti-cancer drugs. However, they still have the critical limitations, such as delay with engraftment time in mice and high maintenance cost. To overcome this limitation, we have established ex vivo gastric cancer PDX culture conditions using porcine stomach tissue-derived decellularized extracellular matrix (St-dECM). We fabricated a large number of samples from one PDX tissue in a day by cutting a single PDX into small pieces and encapsulating them into St-dECM. Our system provide a microenvironment for PDX growth in ex vivo. This process can improve production efficiency, reduce the time and cost for sub-culturing PDX and achieve mass production for drug screening. Furthermore, we confirmed different drug resistance depending on the type of PDX upon 5-fluorouracil treatment. These ex vivo PDX culture platform might be used for various cancer drug screening as well as evaluation method to validate rapid patient-specific drug response.