Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/C4gR-gkrLco/ Small biopsies of a patient’s pancreatic cancer can be grown out into a 3D cell matrix that provides an advanced look at how effective any given chemotherapy might be inside the human body.  Researchers at La Jolla California’s Salk Institute now report the optimal method for rapidly growing these organoids. The harvested cancer cells grow in liquid nutrient but require a supporting biological scaffold in order to organize themselves into a living testing organoid.  The Salk biologists tested 3 different biological matrix products to determine which generated organoids most reliably. Testing with human tumor but also mouse tumor tissue determined that Matrigel surpassed two other products in successfully promoting organoid development with the smallest numbers of seed cells at the greatest rate of speed. Organoids promise to be important tools in therapy selection.  They join genetic analysis of tumors as indispensable components of precision cancer ther