Mini organs for cancer drug discovery

Changing the way we find new cancer treatments by bringing organoid techniques to drug development scale.

Testing new potential cancer treatments on cells grown directly on petri dishes has many limitations. Cells laying on a flat surface are restricted in how accurately they can reflect the biology of a three-dimensional human organ in the body. Researchers needed an improved model for tumours, as well as a model that could be produced in the large quantities necessary for drug development. Scientists at Cardiff University were able to satisfy meet this unmet need.

Tumour organoids offer a powerful pre-clinical discovery tool for new anti-cancer drug treatments. But for organoids to be used in drug development, they needed to be produced in large quantities. They must also be uniform in size and structure and the batches must be reproducible.

Cellesce Ltd is currently valued at £15 million and has secured key contracts with global pharmaceutical and research development companies.

The unique process developed by Cellesce Ltd allows increased production of organoids in both scale and uniformity, compared to other methods. This enables more accuracy and repeatability when testing new cancer drugs. Each batch consists of up to 5 million organoids, sufficient for around 30,000 drug tests per batch. Other methods of organoid formation support around 1,000 drug tests per batch.

By applying their research expertise in cancer organoid models to develop a patented process, the researchers at Cardiff University and Cellesce Ltd were able to provide high quality organoid cultures for pharmaceutical companies across the globe, for use in drug discovery.