Application - Nanoliter-Tumoroid Cultures for Personalized Cancer Treatment

Cancer, especially in its metastatic forms, remains one of the leading causes of death, even though more and more treatment options are available. Due to the heterogeneity of tumors and time constraints, it remains difficult to match patients to their most efficient and beneficial therapy. However, personalized medicine holds tremendous promise for treating cancer. Therefore, we need systems to efficiently and rapidly find the optimal treatment for each individual patient and tumor.

The inherent heterogeneity of each tumor can be reflected by using tumoroids – miniature 3D structures grown from tumor cells extracted from the patient. The response of tumoroids to drug treatments in vitro is predictive of the efficacy of therapeutic approaches for the individual patient. However, current tumoroid assays require 2-3 months of culture time, making them incompatible as predictors for fast clinical decision making.

Here, we aim to establish nanoliter-droplet tumoroid cultures to dramatically accelerate the culture process and optimize the prediction of tumor drug susceptibility and personalized cancer therapies. This would allow shortening the time between biopsy and result, and accelerate the matching of patient and treatment. This project is a close collaboration with the Inselspital Bern, University of Bern, and the research group of Prof. Gehart at the D-HEST at ETH Zürich, and is founded by the ‘external pagepersonalized health and related technologiescall_made' strategic focus area of ETH Zürich.

Several student projects and internship opportunities are available. If you are interested, please contact with a short statement of motivation and CV.