Organoids From Breast Cancer Patients Treated With Neoadjuvant Therapy

The aim of this study is to establish patient-derived organoid (PDO) and tumor tissue cultures from breast cancer patients, in order to create personalized, accurate, and reliable preclinical models capable of providing information on the diverse biomolecular portraits of breast cancer. These models may also be used to predict the achievement of pathological complete response after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) treatment, study the biological, molecular, genetic, and microenvironmental characteristics of each tumor, and isolate tumor-derived extracellular vesicles from the PDOs and tissues and analyze them as potential biomarkers of response to NAC.

This study will recruit patients diagnosed with breast cancer who are candidates for neoadjuvant chemotherapy and subsequent surgery. Tumor tissue samples will be collected before and after treatment to establish patient-derived organoid cultures, which serve as personalized models of each patient's real tumor. Biomarkers released by the organoids (in particular those transported by extracellular vescicles) will be analyzed to identify predictors of therapeutic response. These biomarkers will be correlated with their expression in tumor tissue and subsequently validated in blood samples, collected pre, during and post treatment, as a non-invasive liquid biopsy approach. All data obtained will be analyzed by comparing patients who achieve a pathological complete response (pCR) with those who present residual disease after therapy (non-pCR).