Photo by Darren Baker
Researcher in the lab
The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) have developed an open cancer research portal for patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models.
The portal, known as PDX Finder, catalogues PDX models from numerous global repositories.
At present, PDX Finder contains more than 1900 models for a range of cancers, including hematologic malignancies.
Researchers can search for PDX models and submit their own on the PDX Finder website: http://www.pdxfinder.org.
“PDX models are increasingly recognized as clinically relevant because they retain the patient tumor characteristics and imitate a specific patient’s response to drugs more accurately than other models,” said Nathalie Conte, PDX Finder project lead at EMBL-EBI.
“However, until now, there was no open central catalogue for PDX models. PDX Finder enables cancer researchers to search through a wider variety of models more quickly, saving valuable time and enabling collaborations.”
PDX Finder builds on JAX’s PDX resource, which was developed in partnership with more than 20 medical centers in the US, and EMBL-EBI’s membership of EurOPDX. This ensures the scope and reach of PDX Finder is wider than any other individual resource available, according to JAX and EMBL-EBI.
“Both EMBL-EBI and JAX received independent funding from the National Cancer Institute [NCI] for projects that included implementation of online catalogues for PDX models,” noted Carol Bult, scientific director of the JAX PDX resource.
“Both groups had the goal to help basic and clinical cancer researchers find relevant models fast. With approval from the NCI, we instead collaborated to build a single, unified portal with international scope.”
The launch of PDX Finder comes just months after EMBL-EBI and JAX published the PDX minimal information standard, which sets standards for basic information needed to describe essential properties of a PDX model.
The standard ensures that every model in PDX Finder is carefully described to help researchers choose models that are most relevant to their work.