Rapid autopsies to enhance metastatic research: the UPTIDER post-mortem tissue donation program

Publication date

2024-04-24

Authors

Geukens, Tatjana
De Schepper, Maxim
Van Den Bogaert, Wouter
Van Baelen, Karen
Maetens, Marion
Pabba, Anirudh
Mahdami, Amena
Leduc, Sophia
Isnaldi, Edoardo
Nguyen, Ha-Linh

Editors

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Supervisors

Document Type

Article

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cc_by

Abstract

Research on metastatic cancer has been hampered by limited sample availability. Here we present the breast cancer post-mortem tissue donation program UPTIDER and show how it enabled sampling of a median of 31 (range: 5-90) metastases and 5-8 liquids per patient from its first 20 patients. In a dedicated experiment, we show the mild impact of increasing time after death on RNA quality, transcriptional profiles and immunohistochemical staining in tumor tissue samples. We show that this impact can be counteracted by organ cooling. We successfully generated ex vivo models from tissue and liquid biopsies from distinct histological subtypes of breast cancer. We anticipate these and future findings of UPTIDER to elucidate mechanisms of disease progression and treatment resistance and to provide tools for the exploration of precision medicine strategies in the metastatic setting.

Keywords

Journal Article

Citation

Geukens, T, De Schepper, M, Van Den Bogaert, W, Van Baelen, K, Maetens, M, Pabba, A, Mahdami, A, Leduc, S, Isnaldi, E, Nguyen, H-L, Bachir, I, Hajipirloo, M, Zels, G, Van Cauwenberge, J, Borremans, K, Vandecaveye, V, Weynand, B, Vermeulen, P, Leucci, E, Baietti, M F, Sflomos, G, Battista, L, Brisken, C, Derksen, P W B, Koorman, T, Visser, D, Scheele, C L G J, Thommen, D S, Hatse, S, Fendt, S-M, Vanderheyden, E, Van Brussel, T, Schepers, R, Boeckx, B, Lambrechts, D, Marano, G, Biganzoli, E, Smeets, A, Nevelsteen, I, Punie, K, Neven, P, Wildiers, H, Richard, F, Floris, G & Desmedt, C 2024, 'Rapid autopsies to enhance metastatic research : the UPTIDER post-mortem tissue donation program', NPJ breast cancer, vol. 10, no. 1, 31. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41523-024-00637-3