Maggie Centenera and the team publish landmark paper on the human tissue explant model

Dr Maggie Centenera, Prof Lisa Butler and Ms Natalie Ryan, together with our colleagues at the Dame Roma Mitchell Cancer Research Laboratories, Prof Peter Sutherland from South Terrace Urology and our collaborators from the USA and UK have just published an important paper on an explant model of prostate cancer in the journal Molecular Oncology.

This unique tissue culture model was developed for prostate cancer in Adelaide by Maggie, and it uses prostate tissue from consenting patients undergoing surgery for prostate cancer. Samples of the prostate are collected and taken back to the lab where we keep them alive for a few days in an incubator, enabling us to apply drug treatments and look at the effects on cell growth, cell death, genes, proteins and lipids. In comparison to traditional prostate cancer models used in the laboratory, such as cell lines or mice, these explants more accurately reflect how a prostate tumour will actually respond to a drug, which gives us more precise information about whether the drug will work in patients and better understanding of how the drug is working. Using the explant model will hopefully speed up approval of the most effective new drugs and aid in developing diagnostic tests for prostate cancer patients.

We thank all the prostate cancer patients who generously donated their prostate tissue to the Australian Prostate Cancer BioResource for this study.