International collaboration to create new cancer models to accelerate research

An international project to develop a large, globally accessible, bank of new cancer cell culture models for the research community is underway.

The US-based National Cancer Institute (NCI), Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the foundation Hubrecht Organoid Technology in The Netherlands are joining forces to develop the Human Cancer Models Initiative (HCMI), which will bring together expertise from around the world to make around 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 tumours than the cell lines used today.

This new project is timed perfectly to take advantage of the latest cell culture and genomic sequencing techniques

Dr Louis Staudt, Director of NCI’s Centre for Cancer Genomics, said: '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 tumours and are annotated with genomic and clinical information. This effort is a first step towards learning how to use these tools to design individualised treatments.'

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

Dr Ian Walker, Cancer Research UK’s Director of Clinical Research, said the new project will enable the organisation to can expand its resources for researchers around the world.

'We want scientists to have the best resources to be able to easily study all types of cancer. And these new cell lines could transform how we study cancer and could help to develop better treatments for patients,' he said.

The new models have the potential to reflect the biology of tumours more accurately and better represent the patient population.

The tumour and the derived models will be genetically sequenced. Researchers will have access to this information, as well as the anonymised clinical data about the patients and their tumour.

The HCMI collaborators aim to speed up development of new models and to make research more efficient by avoiding unnecessary duplication of scientific efforts.

Dr Mathew Garnett, group leader at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, said: 'New cancer model derivation technologies are allowing us to generate even more and improved cancer models for research. A concerted and coordinated effort to make new models will accelerate this process, while also allowing for rapid learning, protocol sharing, and standardised culturing methods.'