Predicting if patients will respond to cancer treatment a step closer

A new technology that can study which therapies will work on patients with solid cancerous tumours has been developed by scientists at UCL. Researchers say the tool, which can rapidly test tumorous tissue against different treatments, such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy or radiotherapy, could be used by clinicians to pinpoint the best therapy for a particular patient. Currently it is difficult for doctors to know which treatment a patient will respond to, so several different therapies may be tried before one works. The technological breakthrough builds on the team's previous work. In 2020 they developed a method that can simultaneously measure the behaviours and interactions of millions of different cells, living inside lab-grown tumours. The research provided new insight into how mutated cancer cells "mimic the growth signals" normally expressed by healthy cells - which allows cancer cells to grow unchecked. In this new study they have taken patients' cells to develop mini-tumours, known as organoids, which are grown by embedding cancer stem cells in collagen in the lab.