ESTABLISHMENT OF D HUMAN TISSUE CULTURE MODEL SYSTEM FOR ADVANCING BREAST CANCER

Despite the recognition of obvious breast cancer BC racial health disparity we have failed to reduce the BC outcome gaps in African American women Unavailability of three dimensional D tissue culture model systems that mimics the original tumor s architecture and molecular characteristics of the racially disparate breast tumors limits our advancement in this area The overall goal of this SBIR Phase I proposal is to develop a standardized protocol for the establishment of a three dimensional D tissue culture model system using tumor mass from breast cancer patients of African American and Caucasian Americanracial ethnic background We will achieve overall goal in three parts A development of D tissue culture model system from racially disparate breast tumors B phenotypic characterization of the developed D model system to confirm their stability and C functional characterization and technical validation of the developed D tissue culture models Successful completion of this highly innovative proposal will result in a novel phenotypically stable D culture model system that will be a landmark in BC racial disparity research Moreover this will provide a strong foundation for our next step in that we will pursue a Phase II for developing up to D tissue culture model system for racially disparate BC of different molecular subtypes