New Research From Indivumed Tx Highlights Importance of Snap Freezing Tumour Samples in Target Discovery and Cancer Therapy Development
New research from German precision oncology company Indivumed Therapeutics has revealed molecular changes in tumour samples as soon as ten minutes after they were surgically removed from patients. This shows the importance of snap freezing tissue samples as soon as possible in the interest of conserving the molecular biology of cancer samples.
This is particularly important to cancer therapy development and finding new drug targets. Targets which are based on tumour samples which are frozen later may be less reliable than targets frozen sooner.
The study was published in Cell Death & Disease and looked at how cold ischemia time (the time it takes to preserve surgically removed tissue) effects tissue samples. They looked at over 1,800 tumour and matched normal tissue samples across four cancer types: colorectal, liver and two subtypes of lung cancer.
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The team used multi-omic analysis to compare the gene expression, proteome, and phosphoproteome of samples with cold ischemia times from under ten minutes up to 25 minutes.
Samples which had cold ischemia times of more than ten minutes presented with significant differences in patterns of gene and protein activity compared to samples which were frozen in less than ten minutes.
Lead author of the paper Silvia von der Heyde is a Senior Data Scientist at Indivumed Therapeutics, she said: “We already knew that the molecular expression profile in tissue samples changes the longer they are outside the body, but we were surprised to see the extent of the differences after just ten minutes.”
“This misleading picture of cancer biology has a significant impact on drug discovery, leading researchers to waste time and money on false leads or simply not seeing potentially important targets for novel therapeutics.”
Indivumed has collected a biobank containing many thousands of tumoral and normal tissue samples via its Global Clinical Network partners. These samples have an average cold ischemia time of ten minutes.
Indivumed’s founder and CEO, Hartmut Juhl, believes that the best way to find genuine targets for novel cancer drugs is to get as close to the molecular reality of the disease as possible.
He said: “I am beyond excited to see my vision from 22 years ago reflected in our work today. Our long-standing commitment to sample and data quality is finally paying off and contributing to the search for new treatments that will bring forward the promise of effective cancer medicine for all the patients out there.”
