Abstract

Drug Sensitivity and Resistance Testing Platform for Personalized Medicine at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM)

Jani Saarela, Operational Manager, Screening Unit, Institute for Molecular Medicine

The High Throughput Biomedicine unit at FIMM Technology Centre provides a wide range of biomedical high throughput assays. In collaboration with research groups and the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa, we have set up drug sensitivity and resistance testing (DSRT) platform with a set of 461 approved and investigational oncology drugs on patient samples. Ex vivo drug testing is currently performed at FIMM with primary cancer cells from patients with leukemia and multiple myeloma as well as cancer cell lines. The drug sensitivity responses, measured by cell viability and death readouts, are integrated with molecular profiling such as exome sequencing, transcriptomics and phosphoproteomics. Application of the platform to AML patient samples has uncovered taxonomic drug-response subtypes and individualised therapy based on DSRT has resulted in several clinical responses. The DSRT platform enables drug repositioning, provides new combinatorial possibilities and allows for linking drug sensitivities to predictive biomarkers. We are developing the platform with additional readouts and increasing the number of drugs. Our Labcyte Access Workstation, with Echo550 and Echo525 integration, allows development and set-up of miniaturised follow-up assays, such as reverse-phase protein array and qPCR, using non-contact acoustic dispensing.