Publications

Abstract

Estrogen receptor (ER) positive patient–derived xenograft (PDX) models of breast cancer are important translational tools in our pursuit for a better understanding of treatment resistance and for the preclinical evaluation of novel therapies. PDX modelling of ER+ breast cancer is traditionally associated with caveats such as low engraftment rates and absence of an immune microenvironment, leading to a paucity of ER+ models and an inability to assess immune-related effects. Furthermore, with the increased demand for modelling of therapy-resistant metastatic ER+ disease, our approach to propagating these models needs to evolve to ensure accurate recapitulation of the clinical features observed in patients with treatment-resistant breast cancer. In this review, we discuss recent major advancements in this field and the increasing utility of these models for high throughput screening of novel therapeutics.