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With the expert collaboration of cancer surgeons
and the permission of cancer patients, we have obtained samples from a large
variety of cancer tissue, taken during standard surgery. The main aim of this project is
to determine whether cells cultured directly from these samples could help predict
the patient’s outcome. In the course of this work, we developed a method of measuring
how fast cells grew in the cultures and, unexpectedly, we found that the rate of
cell growth was related
to the survival of the cancer patient.
The graph shows the result for brain cancer
and we are investigating several other cancer types. We are also using these cultures to test their responses to drugs,
such as temozolomide (used for brain cancer)
and new drugs developed in the ACSRC.
Human cell lines
Another spin-off from this project is that
we have been able to develop cell lines from many of the samples received and we
now have a collection of nearly 200 melanoma and brain cancer cell lines, one of
the world’s largest. These lines are being used not only for new drug development
but also to develop a new understanding of tumour growth, invasion and progression.
We have also developed mathematical models to describe the
growth of both cell lines
and, by implication, human tumours before and after treatment with anticancer
therapies.
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Selected recent publications
Baguley BC, Finlay GJ. Stem cell niche versus cancer stem cell niche – differences
and similarities. In: Stem Cell Biology in Health and Disease. Eds.T Dittmar, KS Zänker. ISBN 978-90-481-3041-2. Springer Netherlands. 2009; pp223-233.
Basse B, Joseph WR, Marshall ES, Baguley BC. Analysis of radiation-induced
changes to human melanoma cultures using a mathematical model. Cell
Proliferation 2009; 43(2), 139-46.
PMID: 20447059
Daukste L, Basse B, Baguley BC, Wall DJN. Using a stem cell and progeny model to
illustrate the relationship between cell cycle times of in vivo human tumour
cell tissue populations, in vitro primary cultures and the cell lines derived
from them. J Theor Biol 2009; 260(4), 563-71.
PMID: 19573536
Furneaux CE, Marshall ES, Yeoh K, Monteith SJ, Mews PJ, Sansur CA, Oskouian RJ,
Sharples KJ, Baguley BC. Cell cycle times of short-term cultures of brain cancers
as predictors of survival. Br J Cancer 2008; 99: 1678-1683.
doi:
10.1038/sj.bjc.6604716
Daukste L, Basse B, Baguley BC, Wall DJN. Using a stem cell and progeny model to
illustrate the relationship between cell cycle times of in vivo human tumour
cell tissue populations, in vitro primary cultures and the cell lines derived
from them. J Theor Biol 2009; 260:563-571.
PMID: 19573536
