Tecan Children's Cancer Research Center helps children's anticancer drugs

The development of anticancer drugs in clinical trials requires not only the identification and evaluation of appropriate drugs, but also how these drugs interact with other drug mixtures in cancer treatment systems. For the Telethon Children's Cancer Research Center in Perth, Western Australia, it is essential to increase throughput and reduce experimental volume in order to save money and time on cancer.

The Telethon Children's Cancer Research Center (TKCC) brings together a group of professional researchers and clinicians from around the world to work together to develop more effective ways to treat childhood cancer. Brain tumors are the most common solid tumors in children. In Australia, 200 children are sick each year, and the number of children worldwide is far above this figure. At TKCC, Nick Gottardo and Dr Raelene's Endersby Brain Tumor Research Program (BTRB) is dedicated to improving patient survival and quality of life through basic and preclinical studies, and is primarily responsible for providing the necessary support for the transition from therapy to clinical trials.

TKCC brings together a large number of researchers, oncologists, neurologists, radiologists, chemists, pharmacologists and bioinformatics researchers from academia and industry. It is closely linked to oncologists at Princess Margaret Hospital, the only child hospital in the state, and this relationship is key to determining the direction of research (based on current treatment options). The goal is to develop more targeted, lower DNA damage treatments for cancer.

Raelene explains: “Our labs are looking for agents that stimulate cancer cells to respond to traditional therapies such as chemotherapy and radiation, and then assess their safety and efficacy. We used surgical specimens or transgenic mice to create pediatric brain cancer in vitro. And in vivo models, then use these tumor cells for drug screening and preclinical testing, such as high and low concentration dilution drugs to determine the effective dose of sensitivity detection experiments. We hope to examine the interaction of different drugs; if we introduce a new drug into the present There are experimental protocols that will interfere with current treatments."

Three years ago, the team wanted to develop a workflow automation solution to carry out thousands of necessary drug tests. Raelene continues to add: “We did a lot of dilutions and serial dilutions, either manually before or using a much slower robotic arm. When we touched the D300e, we suddenly understood that the instrument completely changed our lab. The previous work, when working with colleagues, requires two people to work closely together for three or four hours to process a small number of test boards. With automation technology, our flux achieves a qualitative breakthrough, four or five times higher; now, we can more quickly Get more consistent results. Compared to the D300e, manual experiments are much more artificially different from each other, and all the data repeatability is perfect. Compared to our previous data, the error is smaller and more reliable. Higher sex, that is, we don't have to experiment again and again."

“With automation technology, our throughput achieves a qualitative breakthrough... At present, we are able to get more consistent results faster.”

Dr. Jacqueline Whitehouse, senior BTRP scientist, also admired: “The previous work on the liquid handling robotic arm required a few hours of work, now in a few minutes on the Tecan system. We can now use the skin upgrade sample to save a lot of money – because Some of the new anti-cancer drugs are very expensive and difficult to synthesize. We can handle a minimum volume to about five microliters by manual loading or using the previous robotic arm loading. This is a waste of many due to the nature and precision of the pipette itself. Drugs - but we can now achieve a consistent spike in skin upgrades. We were suspicious at first, but it is particularly surprising to see such a small number of samples still studying the efficacy of the target drug. Another advantage of this product is the extremely large size. Compact and easy to fit into a biosafety cabinet. For scarce cultured cells – minimizing the risk of contamination – this feature is important for users because it avoids exposure to potentially dangerous or toxic new chemotherapy ."

“It's very easy to set up quickly; you only need to copy and paste data from Excel®. Staff training is very simple and you don't have to go too far; TKCC's leukemia group also uses our system. This instrument is one-piece and convenient. People share it. We used it very often in the past two years, and because there aren't too many moving parts, the experience is great,” concludes Jacqueline.

All of the above Tecan products are for research use only and are not intended for clinical diagnosis.

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