Patient-derived xenografts from lung cancer and their potential applications

Anticancer drug development is often challenged by a lack of preclinical tumor models that are highly predictive of therapeutic effects in humans, because in vitro cell line models and in vivo xenograft tumors derived from established human cancer cell lines have limited value for predicting the antitumor activity of drugs in clinical trials. This chapter discusses recent progress in establishing patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) from lung cancers, including methodologies for generating and cryopreserving PDXs, biology of lung cancer subtype and their PDXs, and potential applications of PDXs in preclinical and clinical investigations. Because of their ability to recapitulate some clinically relevant features of human cancers, PDXs are expected to be a valuable platform for preclinical evaluation of drug efficacy, identification of targets and biomarkers, and development of personalized therapies. However, generation and molecular annotation of PDXs are time and cost consuming. Lack of immune microenvironments in PDXs also prevents their application in efficacy studies for immunotherapy of cancers. Therefore, alternative tumor models, such as tumor organoids and in vivo tumor models in immunocompetent animals, will still be required for many preclinical and clinical studies.