Jan Bouchal

• Mission: Contribute to the understanding of cancer progression.
• Vision: Validate and use new prognostic and predictive markers in clinical practice.

Treatment of patients with advanced tumors remains a major problem in current oncology. The Department of Clinical and Molecular Pathology makes a fundamental contribution to the correct diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of cancer patients. Examples of research focus are cancers of the colon, breast or prostate. The central position in sample collection and analysis enables biobanking of native tissue and liquid samples from cancer patients. These cohorts are also well annotated with clinical information and play a vital role in the validation of selected biomarkers. They are also very important for multiplex protein analysis to better understand tumor biology. Current in vitro model systems do not fully reflect the biological and clinical diversity of cancer. Organoids are 3D in vitro cell cultures that can better recapitulate the heterogeneity of the disease and preserve the characteristics of the original tumor. Another relevant model is ex-vivo tissue culture, which contains all cell types in the original architecture. The tissues have been shown to retain proliferative capacity for up to one week and may facilitate drug testing or serve as another valuable model in tumor research.

Research objectives

1. Prognostic and predictive biomarkers in tissue and liquid biopsies from patients with advanced cancer.
2. Multiplex immunohistochemistry of candidate biomarkers in tissue samples from cancer patients.
3. Organoids and short-term ex vivo tissue culture for cancer research and drug testing.