Use of High Content Screening to Personalize Chemotherapy.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A retrospective study to prove the utility of using cell High Content Analysis cell death assays to predict which chemotherapy will be most suitable for an individual patient.
IRAS ID
132419
Contact name
Gareth Griffiths
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Imagen Biotech
Research summary
In essence, cancer is caused by random and undesirable changes (mutations) in the genes which control how quickly cells grow (proliferation) or die (apoptosis). Hence every cancer is a unique creation with its own genetic make-up. A consequence of this is that different cancers, even when derived from the same type of tissue, do not necessarily respond the same way to chemotherapy, leading to enormous and unpredictable variations in treatment responses between individual patients. This is why, at present, there is considerable interest in developing tests which can help doctors select the most effective chemotherapy for their patient before treatment is commenced.
Imagen Biotech wants to apply a technology that is used by the pharmaceutical industry to identify new drugs to help guide which drug the doctor should use to treat each individual patient. Briefly, a biopsy of the cancer will be delivered to our labs and the cancer cells placed into special containers which allow many experiments to be performed simultaneously (384 “wells” or test tubes). Robots shall then treat the cells with a selection of chemotherapies at varying doses and the cells will then be examined by an automated microscope and the images analysed by computer algorithms. From this the best drug will be determined for that particular patient and these data will be returned to the doctor so they can manage their patient treatment much more effectively.REC name
North East - York Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
13/NE/0246
Date of REC Opinion
12 Aug 2013
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion