The MD Anderson Prostate Cancer Patient-derived Xenograft Series (MDA PCa PDX) Captures the Molecular Landscape of...

Advances in prostate cancer lag behind other tumor types partly due to the paucity of models reflecting key milestones in prostate cancer progression. Therefore, we develop clinically relevant prostate cancer models.

Since 1996, we have generated clinically annotated patient-derived xenografts (PDXs; the MDA PCa PDX series) linked to specific phenotypes reflecting all aspects of clinical prostate cancer.

We studied two cell line-derived xenografts and the first 80 PDXs derived from 47 human prostate cancer donors. Of these, 47 PDXs derived from 22 donors are working models and can be expanded either as cell lines (MDA PCa 2a and 2b) or PDXs. The histopathologic, genomic, and molecular characteristics (androgen receptor, ERG, and PTEN loss) maintain fidelity with the human tumor and correlate with published findings. PDX growth response to mouse castration and targeted therapy illustrate their clinical utility. Comparative genomic hybridization and sequencing show significant differences in oncogenic pathways in pairs of PDXs derived from different areas of the same tumor. We also identified a recurrent focal deletion in an area that includes the speckle-type POZ protein-like (SPOPL) gene in PDXs derived from seven human donors of 28 studied (25%). SPOPL is a SPOP paralog, and SPOP mutations define a molecular subclass of prostate cancer. SPOPL deletions are found in 7% of The Cancer Genome Atlas prostate cancers, which suggests that our cohort is a reliable platform for targeted drug development.

The MDA PCa PDX series is a dynamic resource that captures the molecular landscape of prostate cancers progressing under novel treatments and enables optimization of prostate cancer-specific, marker-driven therapy.