Current Projects

IN-SYNC: A pilot study to establish research tools for understanding the biology of breast cancer in women 40 years and under

This is a pilot study seeking to develop a process to establish viable live banking/organoid cultures and patient-derived xenographs using breast cancer tissues from patients 40 years and under. If successful, this could lead to the development of a cancer tissue repository of tissue that can be used in live cell studies. Currently, most tissue banks contain tissues that do not allow for recovery of growth after thawing, limiting the biological understanding of this disease.  

The pilot project will focus on two types of tissue: Primary tumour tissue that has been partially processed (dissociated) and frozen as live cells (live cell banking), a primary tumour tissue that has been passaged in mouse models or three-dimensional culture models to create propagatable live cell resources. 

The goals of the pilot study are to successfully:

• Establish a live cell bank of frozen tumour tissue pieces that can be passaged in vitro in organoid culture
• Optimize the culture of patient-derived organoids (PDO)
• Create patient-derived xenografts (PDX) of primary breast tumour tissue that can be
• expanded in vivo and frozen as live tumour pieces (live cell bank).