Establishment and characterization of immortalized human breast cancer cell lines from breast cancer patient-derived xenografts (PDX)

The application of patient-derived xenografts (PDX) in drug screening and testing is a costly and time-consuming endeavor. While cell lines permit extensive mechanistic studies, many human breast cancer cell lines lack patient characteristics and clinical treatment information. Establishing cell lines that retain patient’s genetic and drug response information would enable greater drug screening and mechanistic studies. Therefore, we utilized breast cancer PDX from the Mayo Breast Cancer Genome Guided Therapy Study (BEAUTY) to establish two immortalized, genomically unique breast cancer cell lines. Through extensive genetic and therapeutic testing, the cell lines were found to retain the same clinical subtype, major somatic alterations, and drug response phenotypes as their corresponding PDX and patient tumor. Our findings demonstrate PDX can be utilized to develop immortalized breast cancer cell lines and provide a valuable tool for understanding the molecular mechanism of drug resistance and exploring novel treatment strategies.