Scientists here are a step closer to developing cancer treatments tailored for individual patients, which are more effective and less time-consuming.
Their dream is for such customised treatments to replace current ones that are delivered largely through trial and error.
A team of local scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has come up with a way to take all these steps outside of the human body – by extracting cancer cells from patients, growing them in the laboratory, and then testing drugs on them.
This process enables the scientists to find out which drug, or combination of drugs, will work best to kill the cancer cells in each patient, potentially shortening treatment time and reducing side effects.
“The aim is to give the right drug, to the right patient, at the right time and right dosage,” said Professor Lim Chwee Teck, principal investigator of the Mechanobiology Institute. He led the research with Dr Khoo Bee Luan, senior postdoctoral associate at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology. Dr Khoo conducted the research as an NUS PhD student.
The procedure begins by drawing a blood sample from the patient to be placed in a device where circulating tumour cells as well as white blood cells are separated from red blood cells, plasma and platelets.
Next, the cancer cells and white blood cells are placed in another device, and into microwells. The device containing rows of microwells is then placed in an incubator which mimics the conditions within the human body.
The idea, said Prof Lim, is to grow the cancer cells into tumour clusters large enough for drugs to be tested on them. His team is able to grow tumour clusters in two weeks, much faster than other methods, which take between two and six months.
They have also succeeded more than half of the time, which is twice the success rate of other methods.
Once the tumour clusters have formed, a drug or a combination of drugs, in different concentrations, is injected, and the team will be able to analyse how the tumour responds to the drug in two days.
The device has been tested on more than 400 samples, largely from breast cancer patients. Some were taken from patients suffering from lung cancer, as well as head and neck cancer. The findings were published in the scientific journal Nature Protocols recently.
The team is in discussions with companies which are interested in commercialising the device. The next step would be to get approval from regulatory bodies to trial the device in clinics.
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Source: The Straits Times, 29 March 2018