Total Optical Coherence Characterization for Automated Tumor Analysis

Descrizione del progetto

Sistemi di immaginografia ottica per la caratterizzazione dei tumori

La resistenza ai farmaci rappresenta un’importante sfida in relazione al trattamento del glioblastoma (GBM), un tumore cerebrale aggressivo e spesso letale; di conseguenza, risulta fondamentale migliorare le strategie di trattamento di questa patologia. Sebbene gli sferoidi cellulari (colture di tessuto 3D) offrano modelli di sperimentazione migliori, la loro sensibilità alle condizioni di crescita mette in evidenza l’importanza di selezionarne alcuni in grado di replicare accuratamente il tessuto tumorale. Il progetto TOCCATA, finanziato dal CER, si prefigge di contribuire al raggiungimento di questo obiettivo sviluppando due sistemi avanzati di immaginografia ottica per la caratterizzazione non distruttiva del tessuto tumorale e il monitoraggio della sperimentazione di farmaci in vivo sugli sferoidi. I sistemi concepiti dal progetto consentiranno di scansionare i campioni di tessuto da più angolazioni, fornendo una risoluzione 3D su scala micrometrica al fine di quantificare le proprietà ottiche e identificare gli sferoidi ottimali per i test terapeutici, la medicina personalizzata e i progressi compiuti in ambito di terapia antitumorale.

Obiettivo

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.