Funding awarded to tissue engineering expert for breakthrough research into cancer drugs

An international prize worth £350,000 has been awarded to an expert in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine (TERM) by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET).

The prize fund, won by Professor Rui L. Reis — from the University of Minho in Portugal, will be used in the creation of reliable breakthrough 3D engineered functional cancer disease models that can help predict the efficacy of cancer drugs, without the need for unnecessary animal testing and some clinical trials.

Reis was chosen out of a selection of global candidates for his research in the field of 3D tissue engineering for regenerative therapies and disease models. This funding will support a further five years of work, aiming to create a unique tissue engineering platform to generate 3D cancer microenvironments.

“Cancer has become the third most likely cause of death worldwide. One of the most serious obstacles facing scientists involved in the development and assessment of new anti-cancer drugs and therapies is the failure of preclinical cancer models being able to predict, in a reliable way, whether a given drug will have anti-cancer activity and acceptable toxicity in humans,” explained Reis. “Most animal models are not representative of human situations, and currently more than 70–80% of cancer research is based on 2D models which can’t accurately replicate the three dimensional properties of cancer cells such as tumours.

“I am honoured to receive this award that is considered by many to be one of the major international engineering awards,” he continued. “It is also a privilege to be the first winner whose career is based in a country that is not English-speaking and not a scientific powerhouse. I trust that it will help my team and I to use our TERM unique expertise in order to move towards solving this situation, by means of creating novel breakthrough and reliable 3D engineered functional cancer disease models. This will help to predict the efficacy of novel cancer drugs and potential therapies, avoiding a range of unnecessary animal tests, and preclinical and clinical trials of doomed-to-fail new drugs, and it will for sure have an impact in the future of health care providing.”

Sir John O’Reilly, chair of the IET’s Selection Committee for the Prize, said: “Prof. Rui L. Reis is awarded the A F Harvey Research Prize in recognition of his outstanding research achievements and publication records, in TERM. Trialling the efficacy of new anti-cancer drugs remains one of the biggest challenges facing scientists today and his breakthrough research in the field of 3D engineering of functional cancer disease models could accelerate the screening of new drugs and the approval of new treatments.”