Story By: Georgina Jadikovska, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Newsflash

Scientists from the University of Bern in Switzerland have found that some leukaemia drugs have proven to be extremely effective in treating artificially grown 3D mini tumours from prostate samples.

Researchers at the University of Bern and the Inselspital University Hospital managed to grow organoids from prostate tumour samples which they obtained through biopsies.

These small cell clusters should help them test the effectiveness of various drugs used in cancer therapies to improve treatments for affected patients.

The team of scientists also managed to test 74 different drugs on these tumours and selected 13 substances that delivered the best results in reducing prostate cancer cell growth.

Out of all of these, a substance called ‘Ponatinib’, which costs over USD 138,000 (GBP 100,000) per year in the US, has proven to be extremely effective.

Ponatinib, known under the trade name ‘Iclusig’, is an oral drug developed by ARIAD Pharmaceuticals for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) in patients who are ‘Philadelphia-chromosome positive’ (Ph+).

Dr Marianna Kruithof-de Julio emphasised that the importance of the results which they obtained lies not only in the identification of promising active ingredients but also in the different approaches of medicine to the individual characteristics of a tumour in a particular patient.

She said: “Our results pave the way for precision medicine. In our study, we only evaluated data on five patients retrospectively.

“But we have clearly shown that the method works in practice and two weeks is sufficient for growing the organoids and testing the drugs.”

She believes this is a time frame that is compatible with clinical decision-making.

‘Ponatinib’, whose influence on prostate tumours was tested for the first time ever by the Bernese scientists, has shown very promising results.

The scientists hope to continue the research which could reveal more about the drug’s efficacy.

According to EU statistics, approximately 78,800 men died of prostate cancer in 2020 and it is also the most common type of cancer among Swiss men.

Prostate cancer accounts for 15 percent of all cancer deaths in the small alpine country and can often be completely removed through surgery and radiotherapy when tumours are discovered at an early stage.

However, once the cancer develops, the chances of successful treatment are significantly reduced.

Since doctors are currently unable to predict drug response or resistance to therapy in patients, a research team led by Dr Kruithof-de Julio, from the urology research laboratory at the Department for BioMedical Research (DBMR), at the University of Bern, thought of developing a new approach in order to predict the success of therapies.

For over a year, Dr Sofia Karkampouna and Dr Federico La Manna dealt with cancer cell extraction from biopsied prostate tumours, after which they used them to grow three-dimensional cell clusters (organoids), in contrast to previous research that “only” included two-dimensional clusters grown in Petri dishes.

Dr Marianna Kruithof-de Julio explained the research, saying: “We develop methods in order to grow and multiply cells from biological samples from cancer patients. We try to create favourable conditions for these cells so that they can form spherical clusters of cells, so-called organoids.”

She added: “This would help us optimise and standardise procedures so that we can use the patient-specific organoids in broad tests since conventional cell lines or animal models have proven to not be reliable.”

She said that growing organoids enables the investigation of various biological processes and has shown to be an indispensable tool in biological research and clinical application.

She explained that one of their most important advantages is that they can be grown from a limited supply of a starting material which would significantly reduce abuse of animals in clinical trials.

After performing extensive analyses the researchers discovered that these clusters retain a large part of the specific features of the prostate carcinoma where they originate from since they are characterised by the same genetic mutations and have similar gene activity patterns.

Dr Kruithof-de Julio emphasised the importance of individual drug testing since tumours can develop resistance to standard treatments and stated: “My vision is that we would be involved in clinical decision-making right from the start.”

She added: “The pathologists would divide the biopsy material right at the beginning. They would still give their diagnoses and we could grow the organoids simultaneously. If bioinformatics continues to progress rapidly, my vision may become reality in five to ten years.”

The researchers then used these substances to treat the organoids of five prostate cancer patients out of which two were diagnosed with an early-stage tumour whilst the other three had a rather serious condition where the tumours had already metastasised.

According to Dr Kruithof-de Julio, cancer will become less fatal in the future and more often a chronic disease. But in order to turn these utopic thoughts into reality, researchers and clinicians have to work together hand in hand.

Professor George Thalmann from the university’s urological clinic, who was also involved in the research, explained his futuristic hopes saying that: “In my clinical work, I am regularly confronted with tumours that do not respond to the administered therapy.”

He added: “This is a further step in the direction of precision medicine, where one day we will be able to fit the therapy to the respective tumour and understand its biology better.”

The researchers hope this study will result in more efficient treatments with fewer side effects and lower costs.

The results of the study were published in the journal “Nature Communications”.