Re:Peter Thiel Explains Biotech Investing Rationale: Get Rid...
by fabian2k on Monday September 14, 2015 @04:15AM
(#10214058)
Even with using xenografts instead of cell lines there's plenty of stuff that can go wrong. Animal models are maybe closer to humans than cell lines, but they're still far from perfect.
Derek Lowe posted about this a few days ago on his In The Pipeline blog:
But their rationale is that trying to culture CSCs in vitro runs the risk of having them change character too much, making any assays using them unreliable. My guess is that they’re right about that, but my worry is that xenograft tumors themselves are already unreliable enough to cause trouble (and I have no idea of what happens to them after you “passage” them through multiple animals). Xenograft models are, of course, well known in oncology drug discovery, but one of the things that’s well known about them is that they’re the pure example of “necessary but nowhere near sufficient”.
Derek Lowe posted about this a few days ago on his In The Pipeline blog:
But their rationale is that trying to culture CSCs in vitro runs the risk of having them change character too much, making any assays using them unreliable. My guess is that they’re right about that, but my worry is that xenograft tumors themselves are already unreliable enough to cause trouble (and I have no idea of what happens to them after you “passage” them through multiple animals). Xenograft models are, of course, well known in oncology drug discovery, but one of the things that’s well known about them is that they’re the pure example of “necessary but nowhere near sufficient”.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2015/09/09/cha...