Chicken chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) model as a research tool complementary to patient-derived xenografts (PDX) for preclinical drug testing in sarcomas.

Primary bone sarcoma (BS) is a group of rare tumours with more than 30 subtypes described and poor survival rate in patients with metastatic disease. Thus, there is a need for novel and more effective treatments and reliable preclinical models to evaluate these therapies. We plan to expand our on-going platform of patient-derived xenografts (PDX) (XenoSarc) with BS models and to develop alternative preclinical models: chicken chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) assay. CAM is vascularised, extra-embryonic membrane naturally lacking immunological response, developing in fertilised egg. Tumour fragments from PDX can be placed directly on CAM e.g. for tumour chemosensitivity experiments in vivo without ethical approval for animal drug testing. The aims of the study are to: 1/produce CAM from XenoSarc models; 2/establish additional PDX models from BS; 3/characterize and compare features of paired CAM and PDX; 4/perform evaluation of in vivo sensitivity of selected CAM to established cytotoxic compounds and compare with matching PDX.

Keywords:bone sarcoma, chicken chorioallantoic membrane, patient-derived xenograft models

Disciplines:Cancer therapy, Cancer biology