Members belonging to the EurOPDX Consortium – Translating Knowledge in Oncology, along with additional European academia and SME partners have just secured an injection of 5 million EUR from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme to construct a repository for the open access sharing of over 1500 established PDX models complete with their clinical, molecular and pharmacological annotations.
Officially announced last week by coordinating partner the University of Turin (Italy), with Principal Investigator Enzo Medico at the helm, this pioneering project entitled EDIReX – EuroPDX Distributed Infrastructure for Research on patient-derived cancer Xenografts, will be led by the EurOPDX Consortium and counts on the research excellence of 19 entities spanning 13 European countries. Established to increase the predictability of preclinical data through the use of more reliable cancer models, extend the reach of EurOPDX and further build on its outstanding achievements marked to-date, the main aim of this important undertaking is twofold. First, to facilitate data exchange among academic and industrial, preclinical and translational cancer professionals and second, to promote, spur and consolidate scientific collaboration in PDX research across Europe.
As a reflection of VHIO’s renowned expertise in developing and finely tuning a variety of modelling system including PDX and organoids, our Institute is both founding member and member of the Board of Coordinators for strategic decisions and management of the Consortium. Launched back in 2013, this leading pan-global collaboration connects 18 institutions across 11 EU countries and the US that are generating PDX cancer models and also promotes the exchange of findings on promising therapeutics as well as discoveries reported through its innovative multicenter preclinical studies.
Commenting for VHIO Communications our Director, Josep Tabernero, observed, “The open sharing and exchange of vital insights from various experimental models – a guiding principle that defines both the EurOPDX Consortium and VHIO, will not only help to avoid costly duplication and the exhaustion of precious resources, it will also accelerate the predictive data required to reliably inform the clinical development of innovative agents and approaches as well as evidence reproducibility before moving into the clinic.”
Considering VHIO’s role and relevance in the construction and eventual launch of the EDIReX platform Josep concluded, “From the very outset one of VHIO’s key ambitions is to empower predictive cancer science towards rendering cancer therapies more precise. With one of the biggest PDX collections in Europe particularly in breast, glioblastoma and colorectal cancers, we will assume a leading role in continuously strengthening this much needed, open access resource. Further, as we strive to more accurately model anti-tumor immunotherapy strategies by generating humanized PDX to validate the efficacy of T-cell bispecific antibodies, these research endeavors will surely translate in further insights that we will be sharing via this exciting new platform.”
To discover more about EDIReX, the planning and project partners please consult the press release below. For more information about VHIO’s participation in both EDIReX and the EuroPDX Consortium contact Amanda Wren, VHIO’s Director of Communications via email: awren@vhio.net.
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Source: University of Turin
A European project to build a research infrastructure for access to patient-derived cancer models and data towards advances in translational oncology
- The EurOPDX Consortium, a network of translational and clinical researchers working with clinically-relevant models of human cancer known as patient-derived xenografts (PDX), is teaming up with other key academic and SME partners in a four-year project funded by the European Union.
- The project will create a public repository holding more than 1500 established PDX models for over 30 different cancer types, and provide access to these models for the scientific community. In addition, we announce that the first call for proposals for access to models will be launched in October 2018.
Under the coordination of the University of Turin in Italy, members of the EurOPDX Consortium and additional key European academic and SME partners recently secured 5 million € from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme to build an infrastructure for access to patient-derived cancer xenograft (PDX) models and related data, for academic and industrial, preclinical and translational cancer research.
The EurOPDX Consortium
Counteracting high failure rates in the development of new treatment strategies in oncology and improving therapeutic management of cancer patients requires preclinical models that can account for the complexity and heterogeneity of human tumours. PDX models, which maintain histopathological features and genetic profiles of the original patient tumours, are increasingly recognised as reliable research models to predict treatment efficacy and discover biomarkers.
Numerous small- to mid-scale collections of PDX models for various cancer types have been established by academic laboratories across Europe, which are currently poorly visible and only exchanged on a discrete collaborative basis. This presents a bottle-neck to the use of these valuable resources and results in unnecessary redundancy of PDX models, which are time-consuming and expensive to establish and characterise. In addition, each research group develops its own methodologies, with few comparative studies being conducted. The EurOPDX Consortium was established 5 years ago as an initiative toward the integration of a number of PDX collections, and has been leading the way in raising standards and promoting scientific collaboration in PDX research in Europe (www.europdx.eu).
Towards the EurOPDX Research Infrastructure
This newly funded project named EDIReX (“EurOPDX Distributed Infrastructure for Research on patient-derived cancer Xenografts”), involves 19 partners from 13 European countries and aims to further the reach of the EurOPDX Consortium by offering free-of-charge access to a large PDX resource for academic and industry researchers in Europe and Worldwide. Such a resource is currently lacking in Europe and is much-needed to increase the predictability of preclinical data through the use of more reliable cancer models.
Under the leadership of two major IT partners (Masaryk University and EMBL-EBI), a public repository will be developed integrating a shared collection of over 1500 established PDX models with their clinical, molecular and pharmacological annotation, to facilitate data sharing and selection of models of interest by users. Data will be accessible in particular through the recently launched PDX Finder, a catalogue of PDXs co-developed by the EMBL-EBI and the Jackson Laboratory (www.pdxfinder.org). The EurOPDX repository will also include an innovative tool for improvement of the user experience with 3D visualisation of data, developed by the Italian SME Kairos3D. Access to models will be offered through six state-of-the-art partner facilities or “nodes” in the following institutions: University of Turin (Italy), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), Netherlands Cancer Institute (The Netherlands), University of Cambridge (UK), Institut Curie (France), and Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (Spain). The provision of access will require the “nodes” and the other PDX providers to work toward standardisation and optimisation of biobanking, quality control and data tracking, and the performance of in vivo drug efficacy experiments. We aim to further support the deployment of global and sustainable standards thanks to the pre-existing links between project partners and other related international initiatives.
In addition, the European infrastructure BBMRI-ERIC will bring its expertise in quality management and ethics, and will provide valuable strategic input for the sustainability of the infrastructure.
“Our work on the definition of standards in the field will not only be crucial for the establishment of the infrastructure distributed across 6 nodes, but will also improve the quality and reproducibility of oncology preclinical data on a global scale”, further emphasizes Prof. Enzo Medico, Coordinator of EDIReX (University of Turin, Candiolo Cancer Center IRCCS, Italy). “In addition, we will perform a large comparative study of the standard subcutaneous PDX models with more innovative models (including ex vivo tests performed by the Dutch Contract Research Organisation, OcellO), combined with advanced preclinical imaging, to prepare for future services of the infrastructure and improve its contribution to innovation in cancer research.”
Modalities of access & Announcement of the first call for proposals in October 2018
Access to the PDX resource will be offered through a grant application system which will open in October 2018. The grant will offer successful applicants the opportunity to receive tissue samples from PDX models listed in the newly developed EurOPDX repository, or deposit one of their own models at one of the six “nodes”, for inclusion in the public repository, allowing access to their resource by the wider scientific community. As from the 2nd call (planned in 2019), the nodes will also perform in vivo drug efficacy studies for selected users, and in particular oncology biotechnology companies.
The EDIReX webpage, launched this week (www.europdx.eu/europdx-research-infrastructure , provides further details of the objectives of the project and centralises information on the established standards, the opportunities for access and the modalities of applications.
EDIReX project partners:
Universita degli studi di Torino, Italy (COORDINATOR)
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
The University of Cambridge, UK
Institut Curie, Paris, France
Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), Barcelona, Spain
Stichting Het Netherlands Kanker Instituut-Antoni ven Leeuwenhoek Ziekenhuis, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Masarykova Univerzita, Brno, Czech Republic
European Molecular Biology Laboratory – European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, UK Biobanks and BioMolecular Resources Research Infrastructure Consortium (BBMRI-ERIC), Graz, Austria
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland
Insitut Català d’Oncologia, Barcelona, Spain
The University of Manchester, UK
Academisch Ziekenhuis Groningen, The Netherlands
Oslo Universitetssykehus HF, Norway
Istituto Europeo di Oncologia, Milan, Italy
Hospital Universitario de Fuenlabrada, Madrid, Spain
Kairos3D SRL, Turin, Italy
OcellO BV, Leiden, The Netherlands
seeding science, Limelette, Belgium
Funding:
EDIReX has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant agreement no. #731105
