NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The Jackson Laboratory along with Hartford Hospital and Connecticut Children's Medical Center have formed a genomic medicine collaboration to explore potential new treatments for cancer.
Under the collaboration announced today by Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, the three partners will conduct research into select therapies and their effectiveness against certain cancers. The research will be done using mouse avatars, in which tumor tissues will be grown. Therapies will then be tested in the mouse avatars and the results will be correlated with the particular genetic makeup of the tumor tissue.
The cancers that are to be studied include those with a high risk of relapse occurrence, including certain types of pediatric cancer, Malloy's office said. Colon cancer will also be included.
The work is expected to result in a database correlating cancer treatment results with specific genomic variations observed in tumors. Jackson Lab will make the information publicly available to the global biomedical community.
"Together, we can take the patient's own tumor cells, study their genomics and behavior in the lab, and ultimately translate those findings into a personalized and effective treatment approach," Andrew Salner, director of the Helen & Harry Gray Cancer Center at Hartford Hospital, said in a statement. "Doing this will be a giant leap forward in the development of safe and effective cancer therapies."