Clinicians in the RUSH Cancer Center are continually providing tailored cancer treatment to their patients. In today’s episode with Jessica Slostad, MD, a breast oncologist in the RUSH University System for Health, she profiles one possible, future avenue for personalized medicine--organoid drug screening. Although they are still being evaluated, tumor organoid drug screening may play a key role in the evolution of personalized cancer care. This type of screening could help clinicians test the effectiveness and side effects of therapies prior to giving them to patients.

Later in the episode, she profiles the ways she treats women with pregnancy-associated breast cancer, along with the unique challenges mothers and their babies encounter during treatment.

Dr. Slostad is an assistant professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology, Oncology and Cellular Therapy at RUSH and specializes in breast cancer management. Her research interests include clinical and translational research with a focus on precision oncology and organoid technology.

“As we get more data and if [that data] supports the hypothesis that tumor organoids can be used as a drug screen to predict response, we would eventually look to see if we can use the tumor organoid to pick which therapy for the patient. Our data is not there yet; we first need to establish that there is concordance between the drug screen and what the patient is getting.”

CME Link: https://cmetracker.net/RUSH/Publisher?page=pubOpenSub#/event/490159/