EurOPDX Research Infrastructure - EurOPDX Data Portal opening

1 November 2018

Patient-derived tumour xenografts (PDX) are now widely embraced by the scientific community as important preclinical tools for cancer biomarker discovery and drug development.

The CERIT-SC team represents Masaryk University in the EurOPDX consortium, which has received funding as part of the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program to deliver a much needed infrastructure for access to PDX models.

The EurOPDX Data Portal came recently into existence as a result of the project workpackage EurOPDX RI WP1 Informatics: Developing a public repository for EurOPDX models with Aleš Křenek from MU/CERIT-SC as the WP1 leader. The WP1 successfully reused and extended software developed for PDX Finder, a global catalogue of PDX models being developed by The Jackson Laboratory and EMBL-EBI.

The EurOPDX Data Portal currently contains:

• 644 models, from
• 2 centres for: 
• 2 cancer diagnoses

The EurOPDX Data Portal serves as a new gateway to the PDX models and resources of the EurOPDX Research Infrastructure. It offers free-of-charge access to the PDX models, resources, and expertise of the EurOPDX Research Infrastructure (RI). Trans-national Access (TA) 1st call for proposals is now open (October 31st 2018 - January 31st 2019).

The EurOPDX Data Portal integrates the distributed collection of PDX models established by research institutes, and in particular members of the EurOPDX Consortium (www.europdx.eu), with their clinical, molecular, and pharmacological annotations. It contains PDX models that have been engrafted and grown in NSG mice, quality controlled according to the high standards of EurOPDX, and delivered alongside its PDX passport containing all important accompanying information. Researchers can also request the deposition of their own PDX models within the distributed EurOPDX RI biobank, and displayed within the EurOPDX Data Portal.

The EurOPDX Data Portal was developed as part of the EDIReX: European Distributed Infrastructure for Research on patient-derived cancer Xenografts project, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement no. #731105. The 4 years project involves 19 partners, members of the EurOPDX consortium (http://europdx.eu), from 10 countries and started officially in February 2018. The overall project budget is 5 million EUR, with MU share of approx. 10%.