Novel Zebrafish Patient-Derived Tumor Xenograft Methodology for Evaluating Efficacy of Immune-Stimulating BCG Therapy in Urinary Bladder Cancer.

Background: Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) immunotherapy is the standard-of-care adjuvant therapy for non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer in patients at considerable risk of disease recurrence. Although its exact mechanism of action is unknown, BCG significantly reduces this risk in responding patients but is mainly associated with toxic side-effects in those facing treatment resistance. Methods that allow the identification of BCG responders are, therefore, urgently needed.

Zebrafish patient-derived xenograft models predict lymph node involvement and treatment outcome in non-small cell lung cancer.

Background: Accurate predictions of tumor dissemination risks and medical treatment outcomes are critical to personalize therapy. Patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models in mice have demonstrated high accuracy in predicting therapeutic outcomes, but methods for predicting tumor invasiveness and early stages of vascular/lymphatic dissemination are still lacking. Here we show that a zebrafish tumor xenograft (ZTX) platform based on implantation of PDX tissue fragments recapitulate both treatment outcome and tumor invasiveness/dissemination in patients, within an assay time of only 3 days.