Ishani Malhotra is CEO and founder of Carcinotech, the Edinburgh-based biotech that is 3D bioprinting breast cancer models for drug testing with cells from biopsy samples. Find out how she and her ingenious researchers benefited from expert support from CELLINK, a BICO company.
The annual breast cancer awareness campaign helps women and men (who also suffer from breast cancer) understand the importance of self-checking and scheduling lab tests to catch the disease early. Breast Cancer Awareness Month is also a chance to highlight the amazing progress researchers are making to develop more treatment options for breast cancer.
Carcinotech produces 3D bioprinted tumor models using patient-derived cancer stem cells, primary cells and established cell lines. We developed our testing platform to enable rapid, ethical, sustainable and personalized drug testing. Because patients have different genetic makeups, a drug that works for one person might not work for others. Some chemotherapy drugs, temozolomide for example, will only work for 50% of patients. It is important to conduct individualized drug testing to ensure that the other 50% with a certain genetic mutation are identified. Then we can prescribe other drugs in the pipeline that will help them fight the cancer.
Carcinotech receives biopsy samples from diagnosed patients. With breast cancer, for instance, we isolate the triple-negative breast cancer cells and produce a 3D bioprinted model of the tumor’s in vivo environment. Then we test multiple cancer drugs from our 240-compound library on the 3D breast cancer model, allowing us to see which drugs would offer the patient the best treatment. When we send clinicians this report, it helps them make better treatment decisions, knowing that the compound has already been tested on their patient’s cells.
Histology image of the 3D bioprinted breast cancer model.
It takes 3 weeks from getting the tissue sample in, processing, bioprinting and testing the drugs. The most challenging step is the week it takes to process the biopsy sample and extract enough cells. The bioprinting, on the other hand, doesn’t take long; we can 3D bioprint each plate in 5 minutes. After a 14-day incubation period, when the bioconstruct is at its healthiest, is the best time to test the drug compounds. We’ve experimented with going beyond 30 or 60 days and have settled on 14 days because of what we call necrosis, or the tendency that cells growing close together start dying off.
We established a collaboration with CELLINK last year that gave us access to the BIO X™, which offered the best bioprinting technology. As a startup, we greatly benefited from CELLINK’s exceptional support team, who always answer technical questions within 24 hours. CELLINK is also very prompt about sending us replacement parts when needed. Especially during COVID, we greatly appreciated that they were willing to jump on video calls to walk us through installing parts correctly. Having access to their amazing products and exceptional service has been helpful, and we want to continue the relationship with CELLINK.
We have successfully used CELLINK’s LAMININK 411 bioink to print brain tumors, but we are still testing out which bioink will work best to print the triple-negative breast cancer models. We have been ordering CELLINK bioinks for more than a year now, and CELLINK’s quality control is very thorough and reliable. When we reported a concern with one bioink batch, for example, CELLINK resolved the problem quickly and sent us a replacement batch right away.
Carcinotech’s testing model also makes it possible to screen thousands of potential cancer drug compounds in a high-throughput manner, with disease models that more accurately replicate human tissue and minimize the use of animals for preclinical testing. We expect that breast cancer research will develop more effective drug combinations and immunotherapies in the next 10 years. However, institutions, companies and researchers will need to collaborate, as we did with CELLINK, to get us to a point where breast cancer becomes completely curable.
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