Monday marked the launch of a new international collaboration involving the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health to create a globally accessible bank of approximately 1,000 new cancer cell culture models.
Using new techniques, scientists will develop the models by using tissue from different types of cancer. The new models will be designed to reflect the biology of tumors with increased accuracy to provide a more comprehensive genomic representation of the cancer patient population.
In addition to the NCI, participants include Cancer Research UK in London, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, England, and Hubrecht Organoid Technology in Utrecht, Netherlands.
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"As part of NCI's Precision Medicine Initiative in Oncology, 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," Louis Staudt, MD, PhD, director of NCI's Center for Cancer Genomics, said. "This effort is a first step toward learning how to use these tools to design individualized treatments."
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