Cancer is a huge societal concern representing one death out of sixth in 2020. The vast majority of existing cancers emerge or ultimately develop in bones: leukemia, lung, breast, prostate, kidney, bladder. Our bones are thus considered a privileged “harbour” for cancer cells, and this is also associated with a very poor survival prognostic: bone-developing cancers account for ~3 million deaths each year. When at all existing, treatments are poorly effective: 92% of new therapies successful in preclinical testing fail in clinical trials. This urgently calls for the development of models to study cancer and test therapeutics in a more reliable fashion.
One option lies in the engineering of human mini-bones in mice, in order to mimic the patient bone-developing cancer condition. These mini-bones (aka human ossicles) forming in animals consists in miniaturized bone organs composed of the patient own cells, including cancer cells. The human ossicles were proposed as unique technology to study tumour progression but also test therapeutics in an advanced and personalized in vivo setting. However, despite substantial promises, the human ossicle model suffers from a lack of standardization: only 10% of patient-derived cells can successfully form human ossicle. This prevents the large exploitation of human ossicle as a standard model to study bone-developing cancers and establish tailored treatments.
Our project consisted in developing and validating OssiGel as a technology offering the standardized and reproducible formation of human ossicles. We aimed at defining a clear formulation of OssiGel to be characterized in vitro and in vivo. The technology was to be validated using patient cells in order to verify the possibility to form human ossicles out of it. Last, the project also aimed at gaining experience in entrepreneurship and envision the development of a spin-of company.
