Major funders from U.S., Europe collaborate on cancer models to accelerate research

Several U.S. and European funding agencies on Monday launched a collaborative project to develop a large bank of new cancer cell culture models for the purpose of accelerating cancer research.

The U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI), Cancer Research UK, Britain's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Dutch foundation Hubrecht Organoid Technology will jointly develop the Human Cancer Models Initiative (HCMI), which aims to make about 1,000 cancer cell models.

Using new techniques to grow cells, scientists can make models that will better resemble the tissue architecture and complexity of human tumors than the cell lines used today, a statement from the NCI explained.

"This new project is timed perfectly to take advantage of the latest cell culture and genomic sequencing techniques to create models that are representative of patient tumors and are annotated with genomic and clinical information," said Louis Staudt, director of NCI' s Center for Cancer Genomics.

"This effort is a first step toward learning how to use these tools to design individualized treatments."

The HCMI efforts will provide researchers with genetic sequencing data from tumors and derived models, as well as clinical data about the patients and their tumors.

All information related to the models will be shared in a way that protects patient privacy.

Scientists will make the models using tissue from patients with different types of cancer, potentially including rare and children's cancers, which are often underrepresented or not available at all in existing cell line collections.

Overall, the HCMI collaborators hoped to speed up development of new models and to make research more efficient by avoiding unnecessary duplication of scientific efforts.

"We want scientists to have the best resources to be able to easily study all types of cancer," Ian Walker, Cancer Research UK's director of clinical research and strategic partnerships, said.

"And these new cell lines could transform how we study cancer and could help to develop better treatments for patients," said Walker. Enditem