Pancreatic cancer slice cultures preserve the immune microenvironment

What is it about?

Thin sections of tumor are taken from resected surgical specimens and grown in culture for around 1 week. During that time, the major immune cell populations survive and can therefore be manipulated for therapeutic effect.

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Why is it important?

This work provides evidence that slice cultures can serve as a useful model for studying the immune cells within solid tumors, to enable the testing of various drugs aimed at activating the anti-tumor immune response. We found that exogenous immune cells placed in the cultures are able to penetrate the slices, making this a reasonable platform for testing of adoptive cellular therapy as well.