The National Laboratory Animal Center yesterday announced that it has developed “mouse avatars” to test human cancer treatments in mice and help doctors tailor treatment options for each patient.
To treat cancer with more precision, the center in 2015 developed mice with advanced severe immunodeficiency (ASI), which provided in vivo models to study human tumor tissues, project manager Wang Jui-ling (王瑞鈴) said.
This year, researchers implanted tumors from cancer patients into the mice, creating the avatars, and waited for the tumors to grow and tested what they deemed was the optimal treatment for each mouse, Wang said.
Photo: Chien Hui-ju, Taipei Times
The process, in which each patient’s tumor was grown and treated in a specific mouse, gave physicians the chance to see which drugs might work best for each patient, she said.
Researchers found that the tumors grown in mice were highly similar to the original tumor and some of the initial tests have shown positive results in patients, Wang said.
However, she said that the method is still experimental and more time is needed for testing before the results could be applied in drug development.
Cancer is the leading cause of death in Taiwan, with one person dying from cancer every 11 minutes on average.
Beyond mouse avatars, Wang said other approaches are being used to make cancer treatments more precise and effective.
One is to compare a patient’s tumor specimen with a large number of tumor specimens from patients with the same type of cancer.
To that end, the center in August 2017 collected colorectal and liver cancer specimens from National Cheng Kung University Hospital in Tainan and used cryopreservation to store them, she said.
The center has collected more than 10 types of tumors and more than 120 specimens, and the resulting data is available to all research institutions nationwide, Wang said.
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