Renal cell carcinomas (RCC) showed poor prognosis in the metastatic phase, with a life expectancy of 3 months, prior to the development of anti-angiogenesis treatments.
3 main anti-angiogenesis treatments are available: sunitinib (Pfizer) as first-line treatment, everolimus (Novartis) as second line treatment and sorafenib (Bayer) as a second/third line treatment. Few (5-10%) RCC patients are resistant to sunitinib and treating them with the drug decreases their life expectancy.
The medical need is to predict patients response to reference therapies.
IRCAN Institute developed a method to isolate and cultivate kidney cancer cells from post surgery patient biopsies. (Pages G, PLoS One, March 2014)
This method can be used to predict patient response to the 3 reference therapies by in vitro assays (using the cell impedance technology developed by OdesiaNeoSciences™). Researchers showed significant correlation between sensitivity to targeted therapies on living patients and on cells derived from the initial tumor.
No predictive markers of anti-angiogenesis drugs efficacy are currently available
Our in vitro method:
IC50 of drugs was determined using the MTT assay on:
Cells were sensitive when the IC50 was lower or equal to that in 786-O cells, and insensitive if the IC50 was higher to that in 786-O cells
*p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.0001, NS: non significant
Cell culture for personalized medicine in oncology