Organoid model predicts bladder cancer treatment response
By Lynn McCain | September 20
Personalized medicine utilizes an individual’s genetic and genomic make up to treat and prevent diseases. The promise of personalized medicine continues to grow as new scientific discoveries uncover previously unknown features and drug sensitivities for tumors. In a recent study, Dr. Aaron Udager, associate professor of genitourinary pathology and co-director of our PSTP program, was co-senior author on a publication with Dr. Sofia Merajver, professor of epidemiology and internal medicine and the director of the breast and ovarian cancer risk evaluation program. Their research focused on developing a technique to grow tumor tissue organoids outside the body for bladder cancer, called PDOs, maintaining their genetic makeup, so they could be tested for susceptibility to a variety of drugs. Previously, researchers had developed PDOs, but their genetic makeup changed over time, making them less useful for testing purposes. Udager and Merajver developed short-term PDOs which successfully maintained the genetic structures.
Once the short-term PDOs were developed, Udager and Merajver tested multiple drugs and therapeutics to see if any of them would be effective. As described in their research publication, they found that these bladder cancer short-term PDOs posses a “multiomic signature associated with gemcitabine sensitivity, which could be instrumental in tailoring chemotherapy regimens for individual patients, including intravesical treatment of non-muscle invasive bladder cancer.” While more testing is still needed, this discovery is taking personalized medicine another step forward toward the goal of curing this disease.
Michigan Medicine Health Lab produced a story about this publication as well, which can be found here.
Citation:
Nathan M. Merrill, Samuel D. Kaffenberger, Liwei Bao, Nathalie Vandecan, Laura Goo, Athena Apfel, Xu Cheng, Zhaoping Qin, Chia-Jen Liu, Armand Bankhead, Yin Wang, Varun Kathawate, Lila Tudrick, Habib A. Serhan, Zackariah Farah, Chad Ellimoottil, Khaled S. Hafez, Lindsey A. Herrel, Jeffrey S. Montgomery, Todd M. Morgan, Simpa S. Salami, Alon Z. Weizer, Peter J. Ulintz, Mark L. Day, Matthew B. Soellner, Phillip L. Palmbos, Sofia D. Merajver, Aaron M. Udager. (2024) Integrative Drug Screening and Multiomic Characterization of Patient-derived Bladder Cancer Organoids Reveal Novel Molecular Correlates of Gemcitabine Response. European Urology, 2024, in press. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eururo.2024.05.026
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