1 September 2021 Major international funding for research into therapy resistance in cancer Back to news 90% of people who die from cancer respond well to the first treatment, but the cancer is fatal upon its return. In these cases, the tumor has often become resistant to the treatment that initially worked. PERSIST-SEQ, a new international consortium of academic and industry experts in cancer research, will spend the next 5 years intensively investigating why cancer often returns after treatment. Director of the Hubrecht Institute and Oncode Investigator Alexander van Oudenaarden is Principal Investigator in the project. Therapy resistance is one of the leading causes of cancer deaths and is clinically difficult to predict, prevent or treat. Although resistance has been studied extensively in recent decades, it is still unclear how it arises at the cellular level. “Why does cancer come back after treatment and why does it often come back worse? Using single-cell sequencing and organoid technology, we can answer this question at the cellular level,” says Principal Investigator Alexander van Oudenaarden (Hubrecht Institute and Oncode Institute). “We hope to explain why cancer reappears in different tissue types after treatment and why the reappeared tumor cells grow faster.” The ambition is to test treatment inventions as quickly as possible in patients who could potentially benefit from new treatments. Innovative technologies This initiative is based on two innovative technologies with roots in leading Dutch laboratories: single-cell sequencing and organoids. With single-cell sequencing, genetic information can be mapped for individual cells. The combination with organoid technology makes it possible to do this in the context of a mini-organ or mini-tumor, grown from patient tissue. With this combination and the help from the research group of Hans Clevers (group leader at the Hubrecht Institute), the consortium will map the genetic pattern of 5 million individual cancer cells over the next 5 years. The ultimate goal is to develop new cancer treatments based on these data and to prevent therapy resistance. Broad collaboration PERSIST-SEQ is a public-private partnership between universities, small and medium-sized biotechnology companies and large international pharmaceutical companies. The consortium is led by Oncode Institute and AstraZeneca; program management and communication are coordinated by Lygature. The funding of 7 million euros is provided by the European Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI). “I am very excited to be part of this consortium”, says Van Oudenaarden. “Not only because of the importance of understanding therapy resistance, I am also sure that all partners will learn a lot from each other and thus each other and help further the joint fight against cancer.” This news item was adapted from the press release by Oncode Institute, which can be found here. Visit the PERSIST-SEQ website for more information. About PERSIST-SEQ PERSIST-SEQ is a public-private partnership funded by the IMI, with representation from academic institutions, small- and medium-sized enterprises, public organisations and pharmaceutical companies. The partners involved in the project are Oncode Institute, Hubrecht Institute, Netherlands Cancer Institute, Single Cell Discoveries, Lygature, Wellcome Sanger Institute, Fondazione del Piemonte per l’Oncologia, Hubrecht Organoid Technology, Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Xenopat, AstraZeneca, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, Bayer, Transgene, Charles River. Alexander van Oudenaarden is group leader at the Hubrecht Institute and professor of quantitative biology of gene regulation at the University Medical Center Utrecht and Utrecht University.
