Establishment of Zebrafish Patient-Derived Xenografts from Pancreatic Cancer for Chemosensitivity Testing

Zebrafish patient-derived xenograft is a powerful preclinical model to predict cancer patient chemosensitivity profile in vivo. The protocol describe the generation of the model starting from a patient surgical specimen. By xenografting a small tissue fragment rather than isolate cells into zebrafish embryos, it's possible to maintain the tumor microenvironment which is the crucial step for tumor progression and the response to chemotherapy.

The big advantage of the model is given by its potential to predict the patient's prognosis in a clinical relevant timeframe of just one week acting as a tool for personalized medicine. Begin the sample processing by washing the whole tumor tissue collected from the patient with five milliliters of fresh tumor medium. Pipette it up and down 10 times using a plastic Pasteur pipette.