Abstract PO2-14-08: Development and characterization of breast cancer organoids representing epithelial heterogeneity and drug response
Authors: Brown Daniel , Ding Kai , Chen Fangyuan , Chen Jian , Oesterreich Steffi , Lucas Peter , McAuliffe Priscilla , Atkinson Jennifer , LEE ADRIAN 
Published: May 2024

Organoids serve as an important preclinical model in multiple cancers including breast cancer, demonstrating preservation of biological features and feasibility of drug screening, with reasonable cost and high scalability. It has been reported that patient-derived organoids (PDOs) can be robustly derived from both primary and metastatic breast tumors, with high resemblance to source tissues in histological, genomic, and transcriptomic features, as well as consistency in drug response compared to xeno-transplantations or patients (Sachs et al, 2018).

Since 2018, the Institute for Precision Medicine (IPM) has developed a panel of breast cancer organoids. The current inventory now consists of 128 PDOs from 94 primary tumors, 12 metastases, 12 rapid-autopsy tumors, and 10 normal breast tissues with a 60% success rate of culture; as well as 33 organoids from animal models including 11 patient-derived xenograft organoids (PDXOs), 15 rat (RDO) and 7 mouse (MDO) tumor organoids with 85% success rate. For PDOs, the protocol includes in-lab processing of fresh, deidentified tissue within 60 minutes of surgical operation, thanks to close collaboration with surgeons, consented patients, and an institutional biospecimen core.

BC organoids have been comprehensively characterized in terms of morphology, histology, genomics, transcriptomics, and functional experiments. Key biological features are preserved. PDOs (n=56) exhibit a mutational spectrum consistent with human breast cancers. ER expression is detectable in a subset of cultures with robust estradiol response indicated by GREB1 expression; and PDOs from invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) mostly showed more discohesive structures than PDOs from no special type (NST), with clear E-cadherin loss under immunofluorescence. We have also successfully constructed transcriptionally and genetic modified BC PDOs with shRNA and CRISPR, which showed replicable performance in proliferation assay, drug response, and signaling by western blot. Of note, longitudinal tracking of PDOs with single cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) revealed well-preserved heterogeneity compared to primary tumor, while transcriptomic clonality was mildly decreased in later passages from pilot data. Future work will include expansion of current collection from various sources, longitudinal characterization with scRNA-seq and DNA sequencing, as well as more functional studies. We aim to construct a robust resource of well-characterized and reliably-usable model bank for preclinical breast cancer research.

Citation Format: Daniel Brown, Kai Ding, Fangyuan Chen, Jian Chen, Steffi Oesterreich, Peter Lucas, Priscilla McAuliffe, Jennifer Atkinson, ADRIAN LEE. Development and characterization of breast cancer organoids representing epithelial heterogeneity and drug response [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2023 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2023 Dec 5-9; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(9 Suppl):Abstract nr PO2-14-08.