When you’re testing hundreds of different cancer drugs in the lab, knowing the backstory of the cells you’re testing them on is important.
But cellular history might not always be quite what scientists expect – especially when working with cancer cells that have been growing for decades, not in a patient, but in a flat 2D layer in a plastic dish.
Nestled among the rolling green hills just south of Cambridge, scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute are challenging more than 50 years of cell growing convention.
“It’s really exciting,” the Sanger’s Dr Mathew Garnett tells us as he points to microscopic balls of cancer cells displayed on a screen in his lab.
Garnett’s team is adopting a brand new way to nurture and study cells in the lab – 3D structures called organoids.
And as part of a global research collaboration with Cancer Research UK, the US National Cancer Institute, and Hubrecht Organoid Technology – a Netherlands-based non-profit – the Sanger team is developing thousands of these organoids to help track genetic changes in cancer, and develop new drugs to target them.