A new project has been announced to improve imaging technology for cancer drug discovery.
Drug Discovery
The project is being led by Imperial College London and will aim to improve screening for new cancer drugs. Drugs are usually tested using conventional microscopy to image thin layers of cancer cells. This approach however is not thought to reflect the true complexity of cancer inside people.
When chemotherapy is used to kill cancerous drugs in tumours a small minority find ways to survive and cause the cancer to recur. As current drug screenings measure the ‘average’ behaviour of cells, they can miss the cancerous cells that survive.
More realistic 3D cancer models – made of different cell types that better reflect the complexity inside patients – can show how different cells respond to a new drug. However, these 3D cell cultures are more difficult to image as they more complex and opaquer.
The Imperial project will therefore aim to develop technologies that can more accurately image these complex cancer models in the hope of increasing our understanding into how drugs effect all cell behaviours, and improve outcomes for patients.
The project has been awarded £4.5 million as part of the Cancer Research UK Accelerator Awards programme and includes partners in the Francis Crick Institute, the University of Edinburgh, the Institute of Cancer Research and the Instituto de Recerca Biomedica in Barcelona.
Professor Paul French, who is leading the project, said: “The complexity of cancer is beyond our current understanding and existing therapies. By developing technology to investigate more sophisticated 3D cancer models, which allow us to explore how drugs work on tumour cells interacting with their local environment, we could find new ways to overcome challenges like drug resistance.”
The new techniques could be used to discover drugs that work with currently resistant cancers, and to help understand how cancer cells can interact with surrounding cells to evade drug treatments.
The award comes as part of a £27.4 million investment by Cancer Research UK and its European partners to accelerate lifesaving cancer research.
Dr Iain Foulkes, executive director of research and innovation at Cancer Research UK, said: “If current trends continue, the world will see a 60 percent increase in cancer cases over the next two decades. Cancer is a global problem and no one country can tackle it alone.
“Now the UK has left the European Union, the need to retain collaborative cancer research between the EU and the UK has never been greater. This partnership will also strengthen UK cancer research by the sharing of expertise, new technologies and research talent.”