An international research collaboration, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has generated one of the most extensive and diverse collections of patient-derived tumor models to enhance the study of tumor biology and accelerate the development of cancer therapies.
The Human Cancer Models Initiative (HCMI), a decade-long effort, is now an internationally accessible resource. It comprises 665 next-generation laboratory models representing 25 types of cancer from 2,780 donors, covering common cancer subtypes and their predominant genetic alterations.
Dr. Anthony Letai, director of NIH’s National Cancer Institute (NCI), said, "By linking patient-derived models with detailed molecular and clinical data, HCMI has established a framework for advancing both our understanding of cancer and outcomes for patients." He added that HCMI will distribute these models to cancer researchers. Dr. Dan Gallahan, director of NCI’s Division of Cancer Biology, said, "These validated models are a step closer to providing the experimental base needed for us to better understanding of the complexities of cancer biology."
These patient-derived cancer models are crucial tools for understanding tumor development and treatment response. Unlike previous collections, HCMI’s repository closely matches parental tumors, preserving genetic alterations and gene expression signatures. An analysis of 421 paired tumors and models showed high concordance, including 97.8% agreement in genetic alterations and 92% similarity in RNA expression patterns.
The genomic features of these models make them particularly useful for studying therapeutic resistance, such as in glioblastoma, where researchers detected genetic features associated with resistance to temozolomide. Dr. Louis M. Staudt, chief of the Lymphoid Malignancies Branch at NCI, said, "The hope and expectation are that the close similarity between a patient’s tumor and the derived organoid model means that researchers can use them to discover vulnerabilities that can be exploited therapeutically."
The HCMI tumor compendium includes 522 models with detailed clinical data, 153 models of rare cancers, and 71 models from individuals of non-European ancestry. These resources, along with associated genomic, transcriptomic, epigenomic, and clinical information, are being made broadly available to the scientific community in partnership with the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC). This study was published in Nature.