New zebrafish-based methods for prediction of cisplatin response in bladder cancer
| Reference number | |
| Coordinator | BIOREPERIA AB |
| Funding from Vinnova | SEK 300 000 |
| Project duration | April 2019 - October 2019 |
| Status | Completed |
| Venture | Innovative Startups |
| Call | Innovative Startups step 1 spring 2019 |
Important results from the project
The purpose to establish a system for implantation of cells from urinary bladder cancer biopsies and evaluate therapeutical efficacy of cisplatin-based drugs in zebrafish embryos has been achieved by out established protocols allowing such an analysis for practically all patients analyzed, given that these protocols are followed. We have also established a QMS such that our method can obtain IVD registration in the future.
Expected long term effects
By testing the sensitivity to cisplatin-based treatments on the patients own tumor cells following their implantation in zebrafish embryos, we have established a method for predicting whether the patient will respond to these drugs or not within only 5 days from taking the TUR-B biopsy. The accuracy has been validated for three patients, all giving the same response in the zebrafish as in the patients, and data from 10 additional patients are waiting to be correlated to the clinical outcome.
Approach and implementation
The choice to focus on samples collected from TUR-B gave us an opportunity to expand our method to include other patientgroups where biopsy samples were collected in a similar way for example colorectal cancer. The protocols are developed to work for all types of cancer where samples are collected by this type of tissue sampling technique, and the established QMS also provides an opportunity to quickly add additional cancer types after completed validation of urinary bladder cancer.