Feasibility of testing core needle biopsies ex vivo in the ChemoFx assay

20073 Background: Multiple chemotherapy options exist for the treatment of primary breast cancer. While response rates are good, many patients are treated with unnecessary or ineffective chemotherapy. Inadequate treatments are partly due to the lack of accurate predictors of response in individual patients. To predict an individual’s response to therapy, ex vivo chemosensitivity and resistance assays (CSRAs) have long been evaluated, but have been limited by technical difficulties, including the need for large (1–2 gm) amounts of fresh tissue. However, these problems have largely been overcome with new technology. Novel methods used in Precision Therapeutics’ ChemoFx assay allow for testing smaller amounts of tissue (35 mg). The reduced tissue requirement is crucial in the breast cancer setting, as the diagnosis is often made by percutaneous biopsy. The goals of the study were to determine the growth success rate of culturing epithelial cells from breast tissue core needle biopsies and the feasibility of ...