Invited Presentation 36th Lorne Cancer Conference 2024

Human tumor xenografts are phenocopies of the originating patient cancer and keep their clonal and spatial architecture despite being grown in heavily immunodeficient mice.

I will show some recent and unpublished work from my laboratory that unravels:

• The dynamics and plasticity of cancer cell clones in these models.
• The diversity of cell types and cell states within the malignant compartment.
• The spatial architecture of the tumor microenvironment resolved at single cell level.

These data demonstrate the potential of using human cancer xenografts to characterize the fundamental biology of tumor ecosystems, including how these are initiated and maintained, with obvious implications for the study of dormancy, metastases and therapy resistance.