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

制药业一直依赖于使用传统细胞系和动物模型的体外癌症模型，用于癌症药物治疗的进展，但成功率很低。这一失败可能归因于目前可用的人类细胞系模型不佳（细胞系有能力随着时间的推移改变其遗传组成，远离原始的肿瘤生物学）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的遗传稳定的人肺开发体外模型来解决这个问题肿瘤细胞系（已被证明在长期培养后保持其关键肿瘤特征）。如果成功的话，这个模型将允许更好地理解参与这种复杂疾病的众多细胞类型之间的串扰，以及新药如何操纵这个过程。从长远来看，这将有望导致更有效的抗癌疗法的发展，改善患者的治疗方法，并最终减少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.