Development of a robust and sustantainable in vitro 3D model of human tumours for the identification and evaluation of anti-cancer drugs

制药行业一直依靠使用传统细胞系和动物模型的体外癌症模型来推进癌症的药物治疗，但收效甚微。这种失败可能归因于目前可用的人类细胞系（细胞系有能力随着培养时间的推移改变其基因组成，远离原始肿瘤生物学）的不良模型，以及在动物中获得的结果无法转化为人类。因此，本研究的目的是通过使用创新的3D细胞培养方法以及新型遗传稳定的人肺肿瘤细胞系（已被证明在长期培养后保持其关键肿瘤特征）开发体外模型来解决这一问题。如果成功，这个模型将使我们更好地理解与这种复杂疾病有关的多种细胞类型之间的相互作用，以及新药如何操纵这一过程。从长远来看，这将有望导致更有效的抗癌疗法的发展，改善对患者的治疗，并最终减少在癌症研究和药物发现中使用动物。

The pharmaceutical industry has relied on in vitro models of cancer using traditional cell lines and animalmodels for the progression of drug treatment of cancer with poor success. This failure could be attributed topoor models with currently available human cell lines (where cell lines have the ability to change their geneticmakeup over time in culture away from the original tumour biology) and results obtained in animals nottranslating to man. The aim of this study is therefore to address this problem by development of an in vitromodel using innovative 3D cell culture methodologies alongside novel genetically stable human lung tumourcell lines (which have been shown to maintain their key tumour characteristics after long-term culture). Ifsuccessful, this model will allow for better understanding of the crosstalk between the numerous cell typesinvolved in this complex disease and how new drugs can manipulate this process. In the longer term, this willhopefully lead to the development of more effective anti-cancer therapies, improved treatments for patientsand ultimately a reduction in the use of animals in cancer research and drug discovery.