2023-11-02 20:45:04
RENACER is the first global repository of live brain metastasis samples.
The response of cancer cells to drugs can be studied in live samples. This opens the way to creating avatars for each patient in which to rehearse the therapeutic options before applying them.
RENACER was created by scientists from the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) in Spain. The repository is mainly supported by 18 hospitals.
In these 18 Spanish hospitals, when a patient with brain metastasis undergoes surgery, they can donate a small part of their brain to the first repository of live samples of brain metastasis in the world, based at the CNIO (National Center for Oncological Research). It is a pioneering collection in the world created to accelerate the search for therapies against brain metastasis, a disease that affects up to 30% of all systemic cancer patients.
The creators of RENACER, CNIO researchers Manuel Valiente, head of the Brain Metastasis Group, and Eva Ortega-Paíno, director of the Biobank, present in the academic journal Trends in Cancer, under the title “Updating cancer research with patient-focused networks ”, the advantages of the RENACER collection (free acronym for the National Brain Metastasis Network), which in just three years has gathered samples from more than 150 patients.
Its great peculiarity, and what makes RENACER a valuable tool for the international scientific community, is that the samples are preserved alive, in cultures in which the cells continue to behave in a similar way to how they did in the body.
Sample prepared, classified and preserved in the CNIO Biobank. (Photo: Laura M. Lombardía / CNIO)
A living biobank that makes organotypic crops possible
“We have built a living biobank,” highlight Valiente and Ortega-Paíno. And this feature can be “transformative not only for research, but also for the design of clinical trials, especially when they focus on unmet clinical needs, such as brain metastasis.”
That the cells are alive allows, for example, to study their response to specific drugs. RENACER opens the possibility of creating avatars of each patient, to identify the best therapeutic options in a personalized way.
“Research contracts have already been signed to exploit organotypic cultures derived from patients as avatars, to generate biomarkers of sensitivity or resistance to specific drugs,” the authors explain.
RENACER hospitals work as a network to transfer research results to patients as quickly as possible. In fact, thanks to this network, there are already two clinical trials underway, which will determine the ability of two biomarkers to discriminate the cases in which radiotherapy (a technique with side effects) will be effective.
From the operating room to the biobank, in hours
The requirement that samples be live is not easy to meet, as it requires sophisticated logistical deployment. The samples leave the operating room in a special container, in their culture medium at between 4 and 8 degrees Celsius.
In less than 24 hours they must arrive at the CNIO Biobank in Madrid, where they are processed, organotypic cultures are carried out, and they are divided into aliquots that are stored as samples for future research. They are also analyzed with various techniques and sequenced, to extract the greatest possible amount of information from them. All data are entered into a database open to the international scientific community.
Patients, “donors during difficult neurosurgery for brain metastasis, play an essential role and we firmly believe that it is essential to empower them,” the researchers explain.
The GEPAC (Spanish Group of Cancer Patients) is also part of RENACER. (Source: CNIO)
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