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

Tatjana Geukens, Maxim De Schepper, Wouter Van Den Bogaert, Karen Van Baelen, Marion Maetens, Anirudh Pabba, Amena Mahdami, Sophia Leduc, Edoardo Isnaldi, Ha-Linh Nguyen, Imane Bachir, Maysam Hajipirloo, Gitte Zels, Josephine Van Cauwenberge, Kristien Borremans, Vincent Vandecaveye, Birgit Weynand, Peter Vermeulen, Eleonora Leucci, Maria Francesca BaiettiGeorge Sflomos, Laura Battista, Cathrin Brisken, Patrick W B Derksen, Thijs Koorman, Daan Visser, Colinda L G J Scheele, Daniela S Thommen, Sigrid Hatse, Sarah-Maria Fendt, Evy Vanderheyden, Thomas Van Brussel, Rogier Schepers, Bram Boeckx, Diether Lambrechts, Giuseppe Marano, Elia Biganzoli, Ann Smeets, Ines Nevelsteen, Kevin Punie, Patrick Neven, Hans Wildiers, François Richard, Giuseppe Floris, Christine Desmedt*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

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.

Original languageEnglish
Article number31
Number of pages14
Journalnpj Breast Cancer
Volume10
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 24 Apr 2024

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