A powerful new biosensor developed by European researchers will help identify
cells in the immune system that actively suppress tumour growth, then put them
to use. Enlisting the patient's own immune system would be like sending reinforcements
for resistance fighters.
Cancer is a major killer and an intractable problem confronting medical science,
but now European researchers have developed a biosensor that will help doctors
to use the patient's own immune system to combat the disease.
And during their work the Cochise team discovered that the breakthrough technology
could be used in a host of other applications, from biotech, to green tech to
industrial processes. The biosensor for cancer therapy was the primary focus
of the group, however.
Currently, many cancer therapies in the domain of immuno-oncology use immune
system boosting drugs like interferon, interleukin 2, or various types of colony
stimulating factors. Unfortunately, they can cause a reaction.
A better approach would be to select the “active cells”, which
are successfully fighting the cancer cells, amplify them in a test tube, and
then re-inject them into the body.
Here doctors would merely be assisting the patient's own immune system
to combat the tumour, with no risk of rejection or side effects. It is like
sending reinforcements to help successful resistance fighters behind enemy lines.
But there is a problem. With current technology, there is no easy, cost effective
and reliable way to identify the active cells.
Enter the biosensor
That has changed thanks to the work of the Cochise project, which
stands for ‘cell-on-chip biosensor'. The Cochise team developed
a biosensor capable of identifying interactions between single cells. A biosensor
is simply an instrument designed to detect signals from biological activity.
The Cochise biosensor uses a combination of microfluidics and electronics to
first isolate immune system cells and cancer cells in a microwell, and then
identify the active cells. Key to this analysis are the electronics, firstly
the dielectrophoresis which forces the cells together so doctors can observe
interactions between them. Active cells are then separated from the rest.
“The procedure we identified for measuring cell activity is at the core
of the technology,” says Massimo Bocchi, CTO at MindSeeds Laboratories,
a researcher with the project.
“Basically, we demonstrated, using reference cell lines, that the expected
interactions between cells of the immune system and tumour cells can be reproduced
in microstructures, such as the microwell, at the single-cell level.
“When an event of interest is measured... [say] a cell of the immune
system kills a target tumour cell, the cell of interest can be retrieved from
the platform, transferred to a standard plate and cultured. This complete workflow
allows doctors to study the behaviour of cells because we are able to isolate
them on the basis of their functional activity. This is a key innovative concept
in this field.”
Mission accomplished
The group achieved their aim, and achieved a number of research successes
along the way, notably the development of a new fabrication process and finding
appropriate biocompatible materials.
“This was carried out during the project, demonstrating the possibility
to fabricate disposable devices with a production technology which can be industrialised,
thus supporting large-volume production,” Bocchi stresses.
It is an impressive result, because the biosensor's usefulness goes way
beyond identifying active cells. The technology could introduce new methods
for producing targeted cancer vaccines, introducing a sort of “tuning
of the patient's immune system”, suggests Bocchi.
Another problem in therapeutic protocols today is the difficulty in determining
the effect of a therapy on the tumour. Often feedback comes too late, when additional
therapeutic steps cannot be undertaken. This technology has the potential to
improve therapeutic protocols, thanks to earlier monitoring of the patients'
responses.
The prototype works, delivering live, active cells from the biosensor for amplification,
but there is more work required before it is ready for commercialisation, and
the partners are looking to develop a larger European integrated project to
achieve that.
Scaling up
The biosensor works well, but testing one cell at a time for “useful
interactions” is too slow – because the Cochise project expects
that in any sample there will be very few cells that interact helpfully and
medical labs need to be able to test thousands of cells at a time.
“This level of parallelism is a key issue, we need to explore up to 10,000
interactions before finding an interesting one,” Bocchi reveals. Further
development is necessary to reach that sort of processing capacity in parallel.
For this reason Bocchi believes it could be three to five years before this
biosensor reaches medical labs.
But the project is already generating a lot of interest from industry and peers.
“Several research institutes and hospitals [showed interest] in this platform
for studying the mechanisms of the immune system with a single-cell resolution,
and to see the potential applicability to gene-therapy applications.
“Many pharmaceutical companies, instead, see a potential application
in the field of industrial biotechnology and have [shown] interest in using
this technology to improve some critical steps commonly found, for instance,
in the production of monoclonal antibodies,” notes Bocchi.
A start-up company, Mindseeds Laboratories, was founded with the aim of commercialising
the work, but that will take time and further research. Cochise has shown, however,
that biosensors have an important role to play in the development of novel therapeutic
paradigms, where the patients do the healing.
The Cochise project received funding from the ICT strand of the EU's
Sixth Framework Programme for research.
Source: ICT Results
Posted October 22nd, 2009
