Health and Medicine
PUBLISHED
Despite all our scientific and medical advances, cancer remains a leading cause of death across the world. Every year, millions of people will lose their lives to this large cluster of diseases, and that figure is set to rise in the future.
There is a palpable need for new targeted treatments for cancer, and scientists have a few ways to achieve this. One is the use of tissue models that replicate the genetic and structural features of known tumors.
These lab-grown cancer models offer doctors a way to test specific targeted therapies on tissues that are grown from patient samples, accelerating both drug testing opportunities and the development of precision medicine.
Since the late 1980s, researchers have been creating large biobanks of these lab-grown models that can be used for investigating different cancers and their treatments. The effort started with the Cooperative Human Tissue Network, which was created by the National Cancer Institute in 1987.
Since then, cancer modeling has evolved from simple, artificial cell lines to increasingly complex systems that mirror human tumor genetics, immune reactions, and tissue architecture.
Now, an international team of researchers has added a huge number of new cancer models to the existing roster available to researchers.
This valuable development offers 665 models – complete with annotated clinical information and datasets – which nearly doubles the number of such models that can be used in future research. What’s more, they’re publicly available.
The models represent 27 cancer types, both rare and common, and come with patient specific information related to outcomes and treatment history, as well as molecular data concerning genomic sequencing.
Next-generation models
This is an exciting development. It’s the first time such a large, annotated collection of patient-derived models has been released to the public in one go. Moreover, they have been fully validated as being reliable and faithful to the original samples.
“This is likely to be everyone on the team’s most important contribution to cancer biology in their career,” Keith Ligon, HMS associate professor of pathology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and founding director of the institute’s Center for Patient Derived Models explained in a statement.
“[T]he resulting resource enables new research at a large scale and for many years into the future.”
In the last decade, scientists at Dana-Farber and other organizations have developed what’s known as the next-generation methods to create cancer models.
This involves producing bespoke cell cultures, plating, and growth methods that are specific to types of cancer. The biology of the tumor remains stable in these models and responds to stimuli in similar ways to the original patient tumor.
The models in this new collection include 3D organoids – tiny, artificially created tissue cultures grown from stem cells – that mimic tumors. They also include 3D spheroids – clusters of cancer cells – and 2D cell lines – cancer cells grown on flat layers in dishes.
Together, the collection represents both adult and pediatric cancers belonging to colorectal, pancreatic, lung, and brain tumors, among many more.
Over 20 percent of the models relate to rare cancer types, including some that have previously only had one or two models to represent them.
Of the new models, 318 came from samples taken from patients who had not yet started treatment, while 168 of them were from patients who had been receiving treatments such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted therapy, or immunotherapy.
To say this research was the result of a large-scale effort would be an understatement. The models were created as part of the Human Cancer Models Initiative (HCMI) – an international collaboration between multiple institutes, including the National Cancer Institute, the US National Institutes of Health, Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and Hubrecht Organoid Technology.
The models can be accessed through the American Type Culture Collection.
This development comes at a critical point in our approach to cancer. Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a report warning that global annual cancer cases could double over the next two decades.
The report notes that while cancer was traditionally associated with older people, it is becoming increasingly prevalent among younger populations.
Geography also matters, as these shifting cancer rates highlight significant inequalities in both cancer rates as well as access to prevention, diagnostic and treatment options depending on where you live.
Although the new cancer models represent, as Ligon says, “sea change advance in the tools available to the world”, great efforts will be needed to ensure they really are accessible to everyone who needs them.
The study is published in Nature.
