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SELECTBIO Conferences Organoids, Spheroids & Organs-on-Chips 2024

Alice Soragni's Biography



Alice Soragni, Assistant Professor, University of California Los Angeles

Alice Soragni is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at UCLA and a member of the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Originally from Italy, she received her PhD in Physical Chemistry from ETH Zürich and a postdoctoral fellowship with David Eisenberg (UCLA) before starting her independent lab in December 2016 at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.

We develop strategies to test drugs in 3D tumor organoid models in a fast, reliable, high-throughput, inexpensive manner. Requiring few tumor cells, we aim to extend our methods to test combination of chemotherapies or targeted therapies directly on primary tumors from patients' biopsies or surgical samples in order to personalize treatment. Our most current work is focused on sarcoma, ovarian cancer, neuroendocrine tumors as well as neurofibromas.

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Leveraging Patient-derived Tumor Organoids For Precision Medicine

Tuesday, 19 November 2024 at 14:00

Add to Calendar ▼2024-11-19 14:00:002024-11-19 15:00:00Europe/LondonLeveraging Patient-derived Tumor Organoids For Precision MedicineOrganoids, Spheroids and Organs-on-Chips 2024 in Laguna Hills, CaliforniaLaguna Hills, CaliforniaSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com

Patient-derived tumor organoids (PDTOs) are representative of the histopathology and physiological behavior of tumors. They are clinically relevant, tractable ex vivo models that can be quickly established from tumor biopsies and surgical samples. There is increasing interest in leveraging tumor organoids for drug development and personalized medicine applications for their ability to maintain principal features of the tumor they originate from, including drug response. PDTOs are particularly important to model rare tumors which often completely lack experimental models. We routinely establish organoids from a spectrum of tumors, including rare ovarian and peritoneal cancers (Phan et al, Communications Biology, 2019), benign tumors such as cutaneous neurofibromas (Nguyen et al, Cell Reports Methods, 2024), indolent bone cancers (Al Shihabi et al, Science Advances, 2022) and aggressive sarcomas (Al Shihabi et al, in press, 2024). We have developed a unique organoid screening platform that uses a modified geometry to seed or bioprint cells in a robust, high throughput and automation-compatible format that bypasses the need for any cell sorting, passaging or in vitro expansion. Our short screening timeline, with results available within one week from surgery, is compatible with therapeutic decision making. Overall, we have been able to identify unique drug responses to both fast and slow-growing cancers, including for tumors that are recalcitrant or impossible to grow as patient-derived xenografts. In a pilot study of PDTOs established from over 120 sarcomas, a family of rare tumors arising from bone or soft tissue, we demonstrated how PDTO drug screening provides sensitivity information that correlates with clinical features yielding actionable information for treatment guidance (Al Shihabi et al, in press, 2024). Importantly, sarcoma organoid responses complemented genetic sequencing and mirrored patient outcomes, leading to the launch of a clinical trial to test PDTO use in osteosarcoma (An Organoid-based Functional Precision Medicine Trial in Osteosarcoma: PREMOST, NCT06064682).


Add to Calendar ▼2024-11-18 00:00:002024-11-20 00:00:00Europe/LondonOrganoids, Spheroids and Organs-on-Chips 2024Organoids, Spheroids and Organs-on-Chips 2024 in Laguna Hills, CaliforniaLaguna Hills, CaliforniaSELECTBIOenquiries@selectbiosciences.com