Extending the shelf life of fresh human biopsies to enable improved diagnostics and pre-clinical development.

随着英国人口走向老龄化，包括癌症在内的与老龄化相关的疾病的发病率将上升，英国的医疗体系将面临额外的压力。为了改善疾病诊断和治疗，医疗保健部门正在朝着更加个性化、以个人为重点的方向发展。然而，该领域的研究和发展依赖于获得高质量、新鲜、有活力的组织活检样本。目前，大多数活检都经过处理，使组织不再具有活力或新鲜，并且临床上没有可用的解决方案来保持活检的新鲜。因此，新鲜患者样本的保质期非常短，只有几个小时，这可能导致患者组织被浪费，并严重限制了新型诊断和治疗分析的发展。已经开发出一种技术，可以安全储存新鲜生物样品，延长其在室温下的寿命。这项技术有效地保存了多种细胞类型，如干细胞、原代皮肤和血液制品。此外，这项技术正在应用于目前正在进行临床试验的开拓性疗法，这些疗法利用活细胞治疗传统药物无法成功治疗的疾病和病症。本项目建议扩展该技术，设计一种新颖的创新存储应用，以在室温下保存活检样本，延长测试样本的生存能力，超出其有限的保质期。这将使新奇和特殊的进步成为可能。C疗法基于更复杂和生理相关的癌症模型。这种新的活检存储应用程序将包括一个简单快捷的试剂盒，供医疗保健专业人员使用。通过消除需要立即？X或冷冻组织样本，下游应用的数量急剧增加，并允许进行需要基因组或活样本的敏感分析。最终，为了确保越来越多的疾病病例得到有效控制，因此，从经济和社会的角度来看，医疗保健将不得不依赖更多的专业技术。C和复杂的方法来诊断、监测和治疗疾病。像这样的产品具有令人兴奋的潜力，可以加速这些新型解决方案的开发，以改善疾病管理和患者的治疗效果。

As the UK shifts towards an ageing population the rates of disease associated with ageing, including cancers, will rise and the UK healthcare system will be placed under additional stress. To improve disease diagnostics and treatment, the healthcare sector is moving towards a more personalised, individually focussed approach. However, research and development in this area relies on access to high-quality, fresh, viable tissue biopsy samples. Currently, most biopsies are processed so that the tissue is no longer viable or fresh, and there is no clinically available solution to preserve biopsies fresh. As such, the shelf-life of fresh patient samples is very short at a few hours, which can lead to patient tissue being wasted as well as placing severe limitations on the development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic assays.A technology has been developed that enables the safe storage of fresh biological samples, extending their lifespan at room temperatures. This technology has effectively preserved a wide range of cell types, such as stem cells, primary skin and blood products. Furthermore, the technology is being applied to pioneering therapies, currently undergoing clinical trials, that use live cells to treat diseases and conditions that cannot be successfully treated with conventional drugs. This project proposes to extend this technology to design a novel and innovative storage application to preserve biopsy samples at room temperature, extending the viability of testing samples beyond their limited shelf-life. This would enable the advancement of novel and speci?c therapeutics based on more complex and physiologically relevant cancer models.This new biopsy storage application would consist of a kit that is simple and quick for healthcare professionals to use. By eliminating the need to immediately ?x or freeze tissue samples, the number of downstream applications is dramaticallyincreased and allows for sensitive assays that require genomic or viable samples to be performed. Ultimately, to ensure the growing number of disease cases are managed ef?ciently, both from an economic and social perspective, healthcare will have to rely on more speci?c and complex methods to diagnose, monitor and treat disease.A product like this has the exciting potential to accelerate the development of these novel solutions to improve disease management and patient outcomes.