Tumor Models & Microenvironment

The interaction between tumor cells and the tumor microenvironment (TME) plays an important role in tumor development and drug resistance. Thus, there is a need for appropriate tumor models resembling the situation in vivo  enabling the development of new treatment approaches and making therapy decisions. We address these issues mainly by two approaches:

1. Precision-cut tumor slices maintaining the three-dimensional architecture and tumor heterogeneity can be used to study the TME and evaluate the drug treatment efficacy.
2. Patient derived organoid based on tumor cells can be supplemented with other compartments of the TME such as fibroblasts and immune cells and are a reproducible test system for the evaluation of experimental therapies.