Project description
Optical imaging systems for tumour characterisation
Drug resistance is a major challenge in treating glioblastoma (GBM), an aggressive and often fatal brain cancer. Enhancing GBM treatment strategies is vital. While cell spheroids (3D tissue cultures) offer improved testing models, their sensitivity to growth conditions highlights the importance of selecting spheroids that accurately replicate tumour tissue. The ERC-funded TOCCATA project aims to address this by developing two advanced optical imaging systems for non-destructive tumour tissue characterisation and live drug testing monitoring on spheroids. These systems will scan tissue samples from multiple angles, providing 3D micron-scale resolution to quantify optical properties and identify optimal spheroids for therapeutic testing, personalised medicine, and cancer therapy advancements.
Objective
Drug resistance, whether intrinsic or acquired during the course of treatment, is the primary cause of cancer treatment failure. Resistance is a complex and highly personalized problem, depending on tumor-specific, genetic, and other factors, but certain cancers are particularly difficult to treat. In particular, the most common and deadliest type of cancer originating in the brain, glioblastoma (GBM), is aggressive and highly resistant to treatment. Due to the complex nature of GBM, advanced methods for screening personalized treatment strategies are critically needed to improve patient outcomes. Cell spheroids are 3D tissue cultures that have proven to be a more accurate model of tumor tissue for therapeutic testing, however they are sensitive to their growth and preparation conditions. Variability in spheroid properties may affect the results of therapeutic testing, so a method of identifying spheroids with properties that match the original tissue is needed. In order to combat GBM and other drug resistant cancers, we propose the development of two novel optical imaging systems. These systems will perform non-destructive characterization of tumor tissue and live monitoring of in vitro drug testing on tumor spheroids. Both imaging systems use a unique design to scan the tissue samples at different angles to quantify a wide range of optical properties within the tissue with 3D micron scale resolution. This approach integrates several different optical coherence tomography-based methods and addresses their weaknesses to create a unique platform for comprehensive measurements of optical properties. This platform will be used to scan the original tumor tissue and the resulting tumor spheroids to identify which spheroids will most reliably mimic the original tumor tissue for testing different therapeutic interventions. This approach has the potential to advance the field of personalized medicine and enable more rapid and reliable development of cancer therapies.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG
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1090 Wien
Austria
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