Thread by @SfPRocur

In (breast) cancer research we use a few different model systems to study cancer growth and development:
1) Cell culture
2) Animal models
3) Tissue analysis
4) Ex vivo models

Cell culture is a method to study cells in a petri dish. The cells are taken from a person's tumor, media is added, and the cells are allowed to grow. We grow them in an incubator so the conditions are similar to the body.

This picture is cells called BT474. 📷: @officialatcc

The media we add contains all the nutrients that cells need to survive for baseline growth including amino acids, glucose, and growth factors.

We place the cells into smaller wells to treat them with different drug treatments or hormones then analyze what happened to the cells.

We use animals (usually mice or rats) to understand how cancer develops and whether drugs work in a system vs. a single cell type.

2 important notes:
1 Curing cancer in mice doesn't necessarily translate to people.
2 Animal studies are monitored by IACUC: aalas.org/iacuc

To look at a broader group of samples, we obtain tissue from patients. In this case, a patient would agree to have some of their tumor tissue (that wasn't necessary for diagnosis) to be used for research.

We analyze big sets of samples at once. i.e. cancer.gov/about-nci/orga…

We can also take a piece of a tumor and start growing it immediately in an animal or on a sponge.

Yes ladies and gentleman, a sponge! 🧽 We call them patient derived explants or PDE.

More here: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

In cell culture, animal studies, and PDE, we treat some samples and leave the others as a control. Then we run assays to analyze them.

We test growth rates, protein expression (sometimes by IHC!), and RNA levels to. These data together tell us whether a drug “works” and how.

An important thing to remember is that no model is perfect. Together, they help us make informed decisions for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

In @Prof_Riggins’s lab, I’m focusing on two projects of endocrine resistance:

1. Tamoxifen resistance in #lobular breast cancer
2. Understanding why breast cancer that is Her2+ AND ER+ does not respond to targeted therapies as well as either cancer type alone

For the #lobular project, @Prof_Riggins took lobular cells (Sum44 which stop growing when treated with tamoxifen) and exposed them to increasing concentrations of tamoxifen over time to develop a tamoxifen resistant variant called LCCTam. More here: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18974…

I have been comparing these two cell lines to understand how tamoxifen resistance happens in lobular cells and how that might be different from ductal cells. We published some of this information here: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/28935…

The other project focuses on Her2+ AND ER+ breast cancer.

Remember I told you there are three types? About 10% of all cancer express both ER and has amplified Her2. A lot of clinical trials have showed that normally people with these cancers don’t fair as well as either alone.

We want to know why the presence of both receptors makes the cancer less responsive to either treatment.

I was selected to do a webinar about this work for @GIBCO #cellcultureheroes: thermofisher.com/us/en/home/ref…

P.S. Reach out to @gibcolove if you want to be a cell culture hero!

Overall, completely removing cancer from the body is still one of our biggest challenges in cancer research. We don't know who will develop metastatic disease and scientists are working tirelessly to figure this out as well as develop more effective and better tolerated drugs.