The National Institutes of Health announced funding for an international research collaboration cataloguing human cancer models derived from thousands of patient donors across 25 tumor types on Aug. 5, creating a standardized resource to accelerate precision cancer drug development.
The comprehensive catalog will serve as a shared resource for precision oncology researchers worldwide, according to NIH. Cancer models derived from actual patient tumors allow scientists to test drug responses on tissue that more accurately reflects real-world cancer diversity than traditional laboratory cell lines.
The initiative addresses one of the most significant bottlenecks in translating cancer biology discoveries into treatments that work for actual patients, NIH said. Existing cancer models are often poorly characterized, difficult to access, and insufficiently representative of the genetic diversity found in real patient tumors.
The 25 tumor types covered by the catalog span the most common and deadly forms of cancer affecting Americans, including lung, breast, colorectal, pancreatic, and prostate cancers.
The resource is expected to accelerate identification of precision therapies matched to specific tumor genetic profiles, the agency said. Precision oncology aims to match individual patients with treatments most likely to be effective based on the molecular characteristics of their specific tumor.
The initiative represents a major infrastructure investment in the U.S. cancer research enterprise at a time when federal research funding levels are under active debate in Congress.
NIH’s National Cancer Institute is leading the U.S. participation in the international collaboration, which includes research institutions across multiple countries.