Background: Systemic therapy is the primary treatment for advanced thymic malignancies. However, there is an urgent need to improve clinical outcome. Personalized treatment based on predictive biomarkers is a potential approach to address this requirement. In this study, we aimed to show the correlation between drug sensitivity tests on CTCs-derived organoids and clinical response in patients with thymic malignancies. This approach carries the potential to create personalized cancer avatars and improve treatment outcome for patients.
Methods: We previously reported potential treatment outcome prediction with patient-derived organoids (cancer avatars) in patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. To further investigate the feasibility of this approach in advanced thymic malignancies, we conducted a study in which 12 patients were enrolled and 21 liquid biopsies were performed.
Results: Cancer avatars were successfully derived in 16 out of 21 samples (success rate 76.2%). We found a sensitivity of 1.0 and specificity of 0.6 for drug sensitivity tests on the cancer avatars, and a two-tailed Fisher's exact test revealed a significant correlation between drug sensitivity tests and clinical responses (p = 0.0275).
Conclusion: This study supports the potential of circulating tumor cell-derived organoids to inform personalized treatment for advanced thymic malignancies. Further validation of this proof of concept finding is ongoing.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04972461.
Keywords: circulating tumor cell; organoid; thymic carcinoma; thymic malignancy; thymoma.
© 2023 The Authors. Thoracic Cancer published by China Lung Oncology Group and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.