Project description:Breast cancer affects 1/8 of women throughout their lifetimes, with over 90% of cancer deaths being caused by metastasis. However, metastasis poses unique challenges to research, as complex changes in the microenvironment in different metastatic sites and difficulty obtaining tissue for study hinder the ability to examine in depth the changes that occur during metastasis. Rapid autopsy programs thus fill a unique need in advancing metastasis research. Here, we describe our protocol and processes for establishing and improving the US-based Hope for OTHERS (Our Tissue Helping Enhance Research and Science) program for organ donation in metastatic breast cancer. As of August 2024, we consented 114 patients and performed 37 autopsies, from which we collected 551 unique metastatic frozen tumor samples, 1244 FFPE blocks, 90 longitudinal liquid biopsy samples and developed 14 patient-derived organoid and 8 patient-derived xenograft models. We report in-depth clinical and histopathological information and discuss extensive new research and novel findings in patient outcomes, metastatic phylogeny, and factors in successful living model development. Our results reveal key logistical and protocol improvements that are uniquely beneficial to certain programs based on identifiable features, such as working closely with patient advocates, methods to rescue RNA quality in cases where tissue quality may degrade due to time delays, as well as guidelines and future expansions of our program.
Project description:The goal of the experiment was to explore the differences in the proteomic landscape of pancreatic cancer tissues collected by the Rapid Autopsy Program at UNMC. We hypothesized the proteomic profile can reflect some of the clinical features observed in the patient, and such information can be used for the diagnosis of the disease, or assisting in the selection of treatment options in a clinical setting. The liver metastases tissue collected from 59 pancreatic cancer patients were used to explore the proteomic landscape. 56 of these patients were diagnosed with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and 3 of them had pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PanNET).