Patient-specific Organoid Models Appendix Cancer Treatment

Scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) have recently developed a process that may change the way cancer of the appendix is treated in the future. Researchers at WFIRM, in collaboration with the Department of Surgery – Surgical Oncology at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, have created a patient-specific tumor ‘organoid’ model to identify the most effective treatment for each tumor. Data on appendix cancer is difficult to come by since it is a rare disease, affecting only 1 in 100,000 people. This is complicated further because every patient responds differently to the many chemotherapy treatments available.
“There’s a variable response to the same sets of drugs across patients, so they do typically respond to a drug. We just need the right one,” said Aleksander Skardal, Ph.D., an associate professor of regenerative medicine at WFIRM. Skardal, along with Konstantinos Votanopoulos, M.D., Ph.D., from Wake Forest Baptist, were the lead investigators on the study recently published in the Annals of Surgical Oncology.