StemCell Therapy

FIMMs Individual Systems Medicine (ISM) approach relies on the Echo Liquid Handler from Labcyte, which uses acoustic energy to enable precise screening of potential therapies in a high-throughput, cost-effective manner.

FEATURED PUBLICATION

Journal of Laboratory Automation (JALA) Special Issue February 2016

Kristin Blom, et al. Department of Medical Sciences, Uppsala University

Although medical cancer treatment has improved during the past decades, it is difficult to choose between several first-line treatments supposed to be equally active in the diagnostic group. It is even more difficult to select a treatment after the standard protocols have failed. Any guidance for selection of the most effective treatment is valuable at these critical stages. We describe the principles and procedures for ex vivo assessment of drug activity in tumor cells from patients as a basis for tailored cancer treatment. Patient tumor cells are assayed for cytotoxicity with a panel of drugs. Acoustic drug dispensing provides great flexibility in the selection of drugs for testing; currently, up to 80 compounds and/or combinations thereof may be tested for each patient. Drug response predictions are obtained by classification using an empirical model based on historical responses for the diagnosis. The laboratory workflow is supported by an integrated system that enables rapid analysis and automatic generation of the clinical referral response.

Test combinations of drugs, antibodies, and siRNA molecules in low volumes to identify impacts to cell functioning or toxicity. Echo liquid handlers reliably transfer samples and reagents from any well to any well to improve assay sensitivity and reproducibility.

Recently identified associations between variants of cancer genes and drug resistance have increased the value for comprehensive drug sensitivity screening in combination with molecular profiling of cancer cells. In cancer research, the information from drug sensitivity screening is often used to improve the precision of therapy offered to patients. This can involve treatment with re-purposed therapeutics, novel therapeutics or combinations of therapeutics. Comparison of drug sensitivity information along with the molecular profile of certain cancer cells can enable the identification of underlying genetic links to drug resistance.

As these programs are scaled up, operational costs to prepare samples and perform screening can become rate limiting, delaying treatment decisions. Researchers have found that miniaturization from the use of acoustic liquid handling instead of traditional methods has increased the overall efficiency of drug sensitivity screening by lowering costs while improving data quality and throughput. Echo Dose-Response software enables direct dilution and normalization of simple or complex concentration curves from a range of sample types. With direct dilution, Echo Liquid Handlers produce dose-response assays without the risk of carryover or contamination common to tip-based serial dilution methods.

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