{"entity":{"id":"idea-bio1-metastatic-niche-models","kind":"idea","name":"Build laboratory models of the organs cancer spreads to","aka":[],"tldr":"Cancer usually kills by spreading to bone, liver, lung or brain. Almost all laboratory models grow tumours under the skin instead, where the surroundings are nothing like those organs.","summary":"Subcutaneous xenografts remain the default despite being the least relevant site. Engineered bone marrow niches, liver-on-chip with resident macrophages, and perfused lung and brain models can be seeded with patient tumour cells to study colonisation, dormancy and organ-specific drug response. Organ-specific microenvironments determine both seeding and treatment sensitivity.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Bottleneck evidence (Lab models that fail to predict what happens in patients): Wong, Siah & Lo, Estimation of clinical trial success rates (Biostatistics 2019)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1093/biostatistics/kxx069"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":["organoids","pdx-models"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":["oligometastatic"],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-preclinical-models","b-metastasis-biology"],"keyPapers":["paper-wong-biostatistics"],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"Drug sensitivity of the same tumour cells differs substantially between organ-mimicking niches, and niche-specific results predict site-specific clinical response better than subcutaneous models.","rationale":"Clinically, responses differ by metastatic site (for example liver metastases predict poor immunotherapy benefit), which no subcutaneous model can represent.","test":"Test three agents against matched tumour cells in bone, liver and lung niche models and compare with site-specific response data from clinical imaging cohorts.","maturity":"speculative","actor":"engineering","cost":"medium","horizonYears":5},"route":"/ideas/idea-bio1-metastatic-niche-models/","neighbours":{"technology":[{"id":"organoids","kind":"technology","name":"Patient-derived organoids","route":"/technologies/organoids/"},{"id":"pdx-models","kind":"technology","name":"Patient-derived xenografts","route":"/technologies/pdx-models/"}],"term":[{"id":"oligometastatic","kind":"term","name":"Oligometastatic disease","route":"/terms/oligometastatic/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-preclinical-models","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Lab models that fail to predict what happens in patients","route":"/bottlenecks/b-preclinical-models/"},{"id":"b-metastasis-biology","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Metastasis is understood least and studied last","route":"/bottlenecks/b-metastasis-biology/"}],"paper":[{"id":"paper-wong-biostatistics","kind":"paper","name":"Estimation of clinical trial success rates and related parameters","route":"/key-papers/paper-wong-biostatistics/"}]}}