Preparation of patient derived cell culture models
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Development of tools for personalised medicine based on pancreatic cultured cells from potential patients.
IRAS ID
295716
Contact name
Pedro Perez-Mancera
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Liverpol
Duration of Study in the UK
9 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
The five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer patients is the lowest among common cancers, and remains at only 6%. This unfavourable outcome is related with our deficient knowledge of the molecular pathogenesis of this disease, which has contributed to our inability to intervene more effectively.
Unfortunately, we still do not understand the primary determinants associated to survival in pancreatic cancer and, therefore, there is an urgent need for prognostic biomarkers for outcome prediction to identify those patients who will benefit from different chemotherapy regimens.
This will be essential for developing novel therapeutic strategies, as well as to identify the molecular pathways that should be targeted to benefit the greatest number of patients. Primary pancreatic cells represent an in vitro model of pancreatic cancer research that has been rapidly developed during the last five years. 3D cultures of neoplastic cells established from pancreatic tissue that recapitulate critical aspects of the pancreatic cancer genetic heterogeneity, exhibit disease stage specific characteristics and recapitulate the main features of pancreatic tumour cells biology, including cell-cell contacts and cell-matrix interactions. Moreover, pancreatic cells can be genetically and pharmacologically manipulated, allowing the targeted evaluation of selected genes.
We will employ this 3D cell culture approach to understand the molecular basis of drug resistance in pancreatic cancer, we will establish pancreatic patient-derived cell lines from tumour resected or FNA biopsies. Primary pancreatic cell lines will be treated with different drug combinations currently used in the clinical practice, and drug responses will be assessed. Overall, this study may help to identify the best therapeutic options to treat the patients when they relapse. Furthermore, this project will provide essential and novel information on potential predictive biomarker for response to drug treatment, paving the way to design new approaches to stratify patients for therapeutic interventions.
REC name
North West - Greater Manchester Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/NW/0277
Date of REC Opinion
9 Dec 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion