Academics from the University’s Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry are working with Strathclyde spinout Biogelx to produce drugs which could be tailored to the needs of individual patients.

The research is enabling authentic reproduction of cancer cells and stem cells – a process which, until now, has been largely conducted only in two dimensions.

A three-dimensional approach would create a more accurate representation of the environment these cells inhabit.

The Strathclyde researchers are complementing this approach with the use of Raman spectroscopy, in which a light source is shone on nanoparticles, transferring energy and causing them to vibrate.

Professor Duncan Graham, a Strathclyde partner in the research, said: “We’re interested in moving this into a realistic three-dimensional environment, which is much more akin to what you find in the human body.

“When you take a cell out of its normal environment, it doesn’t last very long, so we have to create an environment which will keep it alive and will be in a three-dimensional environment as well.

“The gels allow us to replicate more accurately than we could previously the three-dimensional environment and to keep these cells alive, so that we can do our measurements in a realistic manner.

“We are working in two main areas at the moment; one is in understanding how stem cells differentiate. If we can look at this at a molecular level, and try and control the differentiation more accurately, can we design systems which will allow us to regenerate parts of the human body more faithfully from individuals…so that we can try and replace parts of the body that we couldn’t replace before?

“The other area we’re interested in is understanding more about cancer cells and how they respond to different treatments. We all know the horrendous side effects of many chemotherapy drugs and perhaps screening a patient’s biopsy before we actually give them a drug would be a big step forward in terms of how they respond to that particular drug.

“So we’re wondering if we can use these gels, with cancer cells and different therapies, to try and understand how the patient would respond before they are actually administered the drug – and obviously try and reduce these side effects but keep the benefits of the drugs themselves against the cancer.”

Dr Eleanore Irvine, Business Development Manager with Biogelx, said: “Many companies, and many academic research institutes, are trying to address this need to make the cells feel more like they are in the body – but study them at bench level.

“What is different about ours is that they are made up of peptides – short, biological building blocks – but they are synthetically made. Many of the other hydrogels that are in this market are derived from animals, so in terms of consistency and reproducibility, that is much harder to control.

“We make our gels very simply, using peptide chemistry that makes them biologically relevant… in addition to that, our gels are tunable, so we can tune the stiffness to access different tissue-mimicking properties.

“If one of our customers wants to grow brain cells, we’ll offer a soft gel that mimics that brain-like environment, and we can access a range of different environments with the gels, right the way through to bone.”

Biogelx, spun out from Strathclyde in 2013, is developing novel, patented gels with a range of biomedical applications. The company is focused on producing gels using methods inspired by biological systems, fundamentally changing the way products are designed and developed.

It is commercialising technology developed in research led by Professor Rein Ulijn, of Strathclyde’s Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry.

 

Links

University of Strathclyde

Biogelx