The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has developed a Patient-Derived Models Repository (PDMR) comprising quality-controlled, early-passage, clinically annotated patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) to serve as a resource for public-private partnerships and for academic drug discovery efforts. The first 100 models were released in May 2017, are clinically annotated with pathologic and molecular information available in a publicly accessible database, and are available to the extramural community for research use (pdmr.cancer.gov). The PDMR was established by NCI at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNLCR) in direct response to discussions with academia and industry; the oncology community's highest-priority need was identified as better preclinical models that more faithfully reflect the patient's tumor and are associated with the patient's treatment history. NCI has focused on collecting specimens from patients with cancers that are under-represented in many other PDX collections such as head and neck, pancreatic, bladder and gynecologic cancers, melanomas, and sarcomas. Recently, NCI has also increased its focus on generation of PDXs from racial and ethnic minorities through new funding opportunities. The initial goal is to have 20-25% of the models in the PDMR from racial and ethnic minorities in diagnoses that are most pertinent to cancer health disparities. The overall goal of NCI is to create a long-term home for at least 1,000 models such that sufficient biologic, clinical, and population diversity is represented to allow researchers to ask questions such as: what is the impact of tumor heterogeneity on target qualification or clinical response; do PDXs more faithfully represent the human tumor for pharmacodynamic assay and predictive marker development; or can an adequately powered preclinical PDX clinical trial lead to better evaluation of therapies for future clinical use?

Grant Support: This project has been funded in part with federal funds from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, under Contract No. HHSN261200800001E. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Health and Human Services, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. government.

Citation Format: Yvonne A. Evrard. NCI's Patient-Derived Models Repository: Generating models from racial and ethnic minorities [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Tenth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2017 Sep 25-28; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2018;27(7 Suppl):Abstract nr IA21.