Use of the patient’s tumor

Category : Development and Applicability

(Practical research)

The last 20 years have seen an upsurge in the use of animals in research, particularly against cancer, due to the lack of an alternative approach that maintains the pathophysiological aspect. Sophie LEON and Julien MARIE have developed a method that does not use any animals and that meets the expectations of a maximum of researchers.

This innovative, rapid, easy-to-implement ex-vivo approach involves living maintenance of the patient’s tumor obtained after surgery or biopsy.

Highly reproducible, preserving the biological integrity and the cellular interactions within the tissue, including the immune system, this method makes it possible to address a large number of experimental questions in academic research and corresponds to the waiting criteria of industrial laboratories.

The objective of Sophie LEON and Julien MARIE is to offer this method to as many researchers as possible.

Validated and published on three types of cancer (breast, lung, melanoma), this technology will be adapted to other cancers, in particular those with a poor prognosis (pancreas), and to pediatric forms to accelerate the availability of new therapeutic actors. This approach can also be applied to healthy tissues and therefore be offered to all biology researchers in the academic and industrial world.

The duration of the project funded by the Descroix-Vernier EthicScience Prize is estimated at 2 years.

Crédit image : Dr Julien Marie et Sophie Léon, Centre de Recherche en Cancérologie de Lyon