Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects (NSERC partnered)

The spread of cancer cells from the primary tumour to other parts of the body via the bloodstream is responsible for much of the mortality caused by cancer. Our ability to treat cancers is dependent in part on the development of new drugs that can block the local spread of cancer cells into the blood stream and into deeper tissues. There are tens of thousands of potential chemical inhibitors that could be used to block local invasion of tissues by cancer cells but what are the best methods to screen these molecules for potential effectiveness? Currently used screening methods use cell culture systems that either do not model the biology of cancer cell invasion in a therapeutically useful fashion or the methods cannot be used for high throughput, robotic analysis capable of measuring thousands of potentially useful molecules. We have developed a novel, cell culture and microscope-based imaging system that allows rapid, robotically-assisted measurements of cell invasion. The system closely models the biological nature of the cancer cell environment and will enable evaluation of thousands of potential anti-invasion molecules in an automated and unbiased fashion. The assay offers considerable promise for drug discovery in the Canadian biotechology field and, over the long-term, for improved patient care. Treatment of cancer costs the Canadian economy more than $4 B/year. The Canadian biopharmaceutical industry, Industry Canada and CIHR have identified discovery and development of novel classes of anti-cancer molecules for complementing the action of existing chemotherapies as a strategic focus for Canadian innovation and development. The proposed project will develop rapid, less costly methods for identifying and characterizing inhibitors of cancer cell invasion with potential use as novel treatments.