A tissue engineering platform to identify target combinations in tumour stoma to render tumours therapy sensitive

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Survival rates for many cancer types are poor and there is a need for new therapies to be developed. A major challengefaced by drug companies is identifying the most promising drugs that will be effective in patients. Currently new drugs aretested on cells cultured in 2D plastic dishes. Studies using this approach however, do not accurately predict how well thedrug will work in patients. One reason contributing to the poor predictability of 2D dishes is that the environment is verydifferent from that in a real tumor in a patient and cell properties (and how they respond to a drug) are strongly dependent ontheir local environment. A need exists for models that better recapitulate the tumor environment and allow an accurateassessment of new drug to ensure the most promising therapies reach patients faster. We have developed a strategy toengineer artificial tumours in which such analysis is possible. Here we will assess the benefits of our new approachcompared to standard 2D dishes and then use our platform to test the effectiveness of new drugs to treat head and neckcancer.