Updating cancer research with patient-focused networks

Abstract

Multidisciplinary patient-centered networks offer access to difficult-to-get samples and initiate projects from human material. Improving such networks to include 'living' samples could be transformative, not only for research but for clinical trial design, especially when focused on unmet clinical needs, such as brain metastasis.

Keywords: biobank; drug-screening; network; omics; patient-derived organotypic culture (PDOC); personalized medicine.

Figure 1

RENACER as a nation-wide effort to generate ‘living’ human brain metastases samples. (A) Eighteen hospitals are part of the National Network of Brain Metastases, which is dedicated to collecting high-quality samples, including ‘living’ brain metastases and liquid biopsies, coordinated by the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) biobank. (B) A schema of the established pipeline for human sample processing and its use. Completed projects are also depicted. Abbreviations: CSF, cerebrospinal fluid; FFPE, formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded; PDOC, patient-derived organotypic culture; WES, whole exome sequencing.

Figure 2

Brain metastases collected in RENACER. A graph indicating the frequency per month of brain metastasis samples (i.e., tissue and/ or liquid biopsy). The mean number of brain metastases/month during the 23 months of establishing the network is indicated. Abbreviation: SD, standard deviation.