This project will investigate organoids and new glycomics methods for cancer precision medicine.
The project aims to purify and analyse different types of complex sugars (glycans) from a single biological sample (e.g. tissue biopsy, biofluids, organoids, etc.), preserving inherent sample heterogeneity that drives cancer resistance and metastasis.
The approach generates a glycosylation profile for each sample that informs about tumour characteristics.
The project aims to address the substantial knowledge gap in cancer tumour glycosylation data by developing an integrated glycomics workflow to produce patient-specific "GlycoMaps" to define important glycan markers of resistant and drug-sensitive patient-derived organoids (mini avatars of tumour tissue) for cancer precision medicine.
Participants
More about the project
Precision medicine uses data-driven insights to reflect the heterogeneity of patients and improve cancer care by offering actionable oncology treatment options. Tumour tissue heterogeneity is the leading cause for inter-patient variation in treatment response.
One of the largest sources of tissue heterogeneity arises from post-translational glycosylation of proteins and aberrant glycosylation is a hallmark of breast and other cancers. Yet, substantial gaps remain in our knowledge of cancer glycans.
Glycomics (the comprehensive study of the glycome) offers the potential to provide the global glycosylation status of a patient and shed new light on tumour heterogeneity to guide precision medicine.
