Drugs affect people differently. Drugs that work well for one person may have little effect in another and can even cause serious side effects in a third. Ineffective treatments remain common in healthcare, creating unnecessary suffering for patients and a substantial cost for society. With an ageing population and increasing pressure on health services, this challenge is becoming ever more important.
In PersMed, SINTEF has initiatved a 14 MNOK project to develop experimental methods to test which drugs work the best for each individual, using the patient’s own, living cells.
Figure: PersMed concept.
Cells are taken from patient biopsies and grown and tested in the laboratory using highly automated and advanced state-of-the-art laboratory facilities and analyzed. The outcome of such experiments can then be used to select the treatment most likely to work for the individual patient or used to better understand the disease. We are currently implementing this approach in the clinic in the ongoing COSENSE-1 clinical trial in collaboration with local clinical and academic collaborators.
Figure: Images of patient-derived cells that are used to monitor cell proliferation and cell death after exposure to cancer drugs.
In the project, we have laboratory protocols to grow and perform high-throuhgput drug sensitivity screening on a range of different tissues and diseases:
- Primary and metastatic colorectal cancer
- Bile duct cancer
- Endometriosis
- Inflammatory bowel disease
We have also organoids from other tissues
- Colorectal cancer tumor organoids
- Colon (Inflammatory bowel disease)
- Endometrial (endometriosis and menstrual blood)
- Kidney organoids
Figure: A selection of advanced cellular models used in the project.
We use these advanced cellular models as laboratory test systems to better understand disease and choose the right therapy for the right patient. We also use organoid systems and high-content imaging to evaluate immunological and toxicological effects of drugs and experimental treatments.