Prostate Patient Derived Xenograft

XenTech holds the hormone-dependent prostate patient-derived xenograft model PAC120 and its castration-resistant variant HID28.

Certain fundamental needs in the treatment of prostate cancer are not being fulfilled:

• Effective drug therapies against hormone-refractory cancer
• Effective drugs that delay or prevent progression to hormone-refractory disease
• Effective drug therapies with minimal side effects

There are currently limitations to understanding the biology for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer. This primarily is due to the rareness of experimental models available to examine and discover new possible therapies. At present there are only a small number of tumor models available and the success of transplantation of human prostate cancer tissue into immune-deficient mice is very low.

XenTech has established the PAC120 hormone-dependent human prostate cancer xenograft model which provides an opportunity to seek the most active chemotherapeutic regimen and explore the biological basis of responsiveness.

The PAC120 model has a Gleason score of 9 (5+4) replicating the original patient’s tumor. PAC120 is wild-type for PTEN and mutated for P53, expresses low PSA levels (0.55 ng/ml) and has a non-mutated and functional androgen receptor (AR). In addition to experimental therapeutics, when treated with androgen deprivation therapy this model allows for the study of hormonal escape in prostate cancer.

The HID28 model, which is a PAC120 castration-resistant variant is available at XenTech. The tumor variant has been obtained after surgical castration of PAC120-bearing mice.

Treatment with the LHRH antagonist Degarelix suppresses the growth of PAC120.

In-spite of PAC120 and its HID variants responding well to docetaxel, resistance starts to develop in the treated animals and tumors resume their growth even though continuous docetaxel treatment is administered.

For more information or to discuss prostate patient-derived xenograft please contact us directly.