Abstract 3194: Development of an in vitro drug profiling platform with primary Rhabdomyosarcoma cells for tailoring patient-specific treatments

The paradigm of cancer therapy currently shifts from broadly used cytotoxic drug cocktails to patient specific precision therapies. These novel therapies are normally directed towards tumor specific driver oncogenes, identified by genomic analysis of individual tumors. In case of tumors with a very low mutational burden and/or currently undruggable driver oncogenes this approach is less suitable. There, direct drug profiling of in vitro cultured tumor cells represents a promising alternative for identification of patient specific therapies. Conditions to maintain primary tumor cells in culture for this purpose however are largely unknown for most tumor entities. Here, we aimed to establish an in vitro drug profiling platform for Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS), a childhood cancer with above described characteristics. Towards this aim, we isolated cells from 6 alveolar and 8 embryonal RMS patient derived xenografts and systematically tested 18 different culture conditions in order to find suitable parameters for in vitro propagation of primary RMS cells. This approach revealed that cells from most tumors survive and proliferate only in serum-free medium, whereas in serum containing medium tumor cells are progressively lost over time. Importantly, cells preserve the clonal composition and phenotypic characteristics of the primary PDX under these conditions, as assessed by genomic and copy number analysis. Drug profiles established with a library of 204 drugs revealed, beside patient-specific vulnerabilities, a yet unrecognized sensitivity of a subgroup of alveolar RMS towards AKT inhibitors. Furthermore, screening with the same drugs for resensitization of resistant relapse samples identified the BCL-2 family inhibitor ABT-263 as most potent resensitizer towards standard-of-care chemotherapy. Detailed molecular analysis revealed that this effect is based on blockade of the BCL-XL-MCL-1 axis. Overall, our proof of concept study highlights the feasibility of in vitro drug profiling of primary RMS cells for patient-specific treatment selection in a co-clinical setting. Citation Format: Marco Wachtel, Gabriele Manzella, Michaela Rommele, Luduo Zhang, Joelle Tchinda, Felix Niggli, Beat Schafer. Development of an in vitro drug profiling platform with primary Rhabdomyosarcoma cells for tailoring patient-specific treatments [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 3194.