Donate to Science & Enterprise

S&E on Mastodon

S&E on LinkedIn

S&E on Flipboard

Please share Science & Enterprise

European Researchers to Develop Lab Cancer Bio-Model

Frances Balkwill (Queen Mary, University of London)

Frances Balkwill (Queen Mary, University of London)

Researchers in the U.K. and Switzerland are building a simulated environment to grow cancer cells in the lab for a better understanding of the way cancer cells develop and spread. The CANBUILD project draws faculty from Queen Mary, University of London — including the principal investogator Frances Balkwill — as well as colleagues from Cancer Research UK in Cambridge and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, and is funded by a five-year, €2.43 million ($US 3.17 million) grant from the European Research Council.

Balkwill and associates aim to develop a complex three-dimension tumor bio-environment in the lab. This simulated enviroment will contain not only cancer cells, but also the system of cells and substances in the body that the malignant cells harness for their own support. This support system for cancer cells is becoming increasingly important in cancer-fighting strategies, particularly for long-term treatment, and is not adequately represented in many studies that focus on cancer cells in isolation.

The CANBUILD project has a multidisciplinary team of researchers that expects to take advantage of advances in tissue engineering, biomechanics, imaging, and stem cells to develop a three-dimensional lab model in which the different cell types can communicate and evolve. The project plans to focus first on a high-grade, serious form of cancer that leads to 70 percent of ovarian cancer deaths, but the researchers believe the lessons from the project can be applied to other forms of cancer as well.

The CANBUILD team plans to construct a scaffold made of different cell types, on which the model will be built. The model will be used to test fresh human tissue against the model, and investigate the roles of individual cells in human cancer growth. The model will also help test new therapies.

“About half the cells in a tumour are not cancer cells, but ‘healthy’ cells such as immune cells and fibroblasts which the cancer is somehow corrupting to help it grow and spread,” says Balkwill. “It seems logical that the best long-term treatments will come from combining both therapies that target the cancer cells with something aimed at the wider tumor microenvironment which, while not cancerous cells themselves, are supporting the cancer’s growth.”

Read more:

*     *     *

Comments are closed.