AN ORGANOID AVATAR BIOBANK FOR CANCER DISPARITIES

This project seeks to establish a colorectal cancer organoid avatar bio bank from an ethnically and genetically diverse patient population that is approximately African American We will make use of discarded de identified surgical specimens to establish dimensional cultures of tumor and matched normal colon stem cells organoids Organoid avatars will be characterized by WNT EGF and TGFB in dependence presence of somatic mutations in colon cancer genes percent African ancestry measure IC s for select drugs from the Approved Oncology Drugs panel and create isogenic tumor organoids with select colon cancer driver gene mutations suitable for drug screening efforts This work will create organoid lines which will be used to advance our understanding of basic mechanisms of cancer health disparities among African Americans