New research to explore personalised treatments for cancer

Open University (OU) researchers have joined forces with industry to develop a model to make it possible to provide personalised treatments for cancer.

The research is led by Dr Jim Hague, Senior Lecturer in the School of Physical Sciences in the OU’s Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, and uses a 3D biophysical model and machine learning approached developed at the OU to simulate how cells organise in mini tumours known as tumoroids  and determine how well they have responded to treatments.

Dr Hague said: “In my opinion, the development of personalised treatments and pharmaceutical testing based on tumoroids will be a significant step forward in identifying the best treatment plans for cancer patients, while reducing the need for animal testing. Our goal is to use machine learning to enhance the accuracy for measuring individual tumour responses to medicines tested in this way.”

Dr Hague and his co-investigators Dr Hugh Dickinson, Dr Calum McMullen and Dr Katja Rietdorf have received £250,000 from UK Research and Innovation for this research, following on from a Knowledge Transfer Voucher scheme with commercial partner, Inaphaea Biolabs, a wholly owned subsidiary of ValiRx plc, which specialises in oncology and women’s health.

Inaphaea, will supply patient-derived cells (PDCs) for production of spheroids, a 3D cell assembly of tumour cells and share data generated on the cells, including drug response profiling and will evaluate predictive models for drug development. They will focus on treatments for major cancers, especially triple-negative breast, colorectal and prostate cancers.

Mark Eccleston, CEO of ValiRx, commented: “Inaphaea is a translational Contract Research Organisation (tCRO™) offering smart drug development approaches based around our extensive Patient Derived Cell bank.

“We strongly believe that more realistic disease models provide better results and have been developing our biobank to offer a range of services based on 2D and 3D culture models. The Open University’s predicative modelling offers new methodologies for drug development.”

Dr Hague added: “It’s often difficult to know which cancer treatment to use to get the biggest benefit to the patient. To figure this out, different chemotherapies can be tried out on balls of cells, known as spheroids, grown from a tumour. This can ultimately save patients from the side effects and delays from receiving less beneficial treatments, when time is precious. At The Open University, we’ve developed tools for understanding tissue growth, and we want to establish how these tools can help us to improve the accuracy of identifying the best treatments.”

The project is due to begin on 1 October 2025 and to have its initial findings by 30 September 2026.