Orthotopic patient-derived xenograft (O-PDX) testing is a drug efficacy study performed on your tumor tissue in live mouse avatars. It’s what scientists call a functional assay. Functional assays are systematic in vivo (in-life or in-animal) experiments used to study complex biological processes.

There are many new and emerging technologies in the field of precision oncology (genomic profiling, in silico modeling and others) that can give insight into what therapies might fight your cancer. In fact, these tools are complementary to O-PDX pharmacology testing because they can help determine which therapies we should test in your study. O-PDX pharmacology testing is an advanced functional approach to precision oncology that has been shown to mimic the tumor microenvironment, metastatic behavior and drug response.^1-4

1 Das Thakur, M., Salangsang, F., Landman, A. et al. Modelling Vemurafenib Resistance in Melanoma Reveals a Strategy to Forestall Drug Resistance. Nature. 2013; 494(7436): 251–255.
2 Walters DM, Stokes JB, Adair SJ, et al. Clinical, Molecular and Genetic Validation of a Murine Orthotopic Xenograft Model of Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma Using Fresh Human Specimens. PLoS One. 2013;8(10): e77065.
3 Killion JJ, Radinsky R, Fidler IJ. Orthotopic Models are Necessary to Predict Therapy of Transplantable Tumors in Mice. Cancer Metastasis Rev. 1998-1999;17(3):279–284.
2013;8(10): e77065.
4 Qiu W, Su GH. Development of Orthotopic Pancreatic Tumor Mouse Models. Mol Biol. 2013; 980: 215-223.