In the past several decades, oncology drug development has had some major successes, from the approval of game-changing therapeutics such as rituximab and trastuzumab in the late-90s to the first tumor-agnostic approval for pembrolizumab in 2017.1

Why do the quaintest analogies stick to biology’s most morbid phenomena? Look no further than English surgeon Stephen Paget’s “seed and soil” model for breast cancer metastasis for a prototypical example. In his 1889 publication in the Lancet,...

THE RIGHT TUMOR MODELS BRING GREATER CERTAINTY TO DRUG CANDIDATE SELECTION  

FROM GENETIC TESTING FOR CANCER TO FUNCTIONAL, PATIENT-DERIVED MODELS Genetic testing for cancer has rapidly become an important and routine part of oncology treatment. It’s driven the rise of precision oncology, where clinicians seek to match...

AACR 2021 Poster #2929: Predicting Patient’s Therapeutic Response and Acquired Drug Resistance with Orthotopic Patient-Derived Xenografts (O-PDX) Patient-derived xenografts (PDX) are a commonly used in vivo model that can provide clinically...

Subcutaneous vs Orthotopic Xenografts: Identifying Clinically Relevant Models for Making More Accurate, Personalized Cancer Treatment Decisions In our last blog, we explored some of the current gaps in personalized medicine and how...

In the past few decades, researchers and clinicians have gained a deep understanding of the biology behind tumor growth and metastasis and the clinical course for many different types of cancers. Despite these advancements, cancers are still treated...

A persistent challenge in anti-cancer drug development remains translation from animal studies to human clinical trials. A shocking 57% of late-stage oncology trials fail due to inadequate efficacy. These failures amount to billions of dollars in...

On December 15th, 2020, Dr. Jonathan Nakashima, PhD, CSO of Certis Oncology, joined Taconic Biosciences to present a comprehensive overview of O-PDX testing.  O-PDX is a technique which uses in vivo pharmacology testing in personalized mouse models,...