Hester Bange will present a poster entitled:
3D High-Content Screening of compound libraries to identify new modulators of polycystic kidney disease
More information about the conference, click here
All Posts by: Karine Estur
Live from AACR, a video discussion on how 3D cell cultures are changing how we look at tumors
OcellO #1 of TOP 8 Innovation Picks
OcellO was selected as one of the suppliers who presented at the Innovation Day at Medimmune in October 2016 in Gaithersburg, MD, USA (Click here for the list of suppliers).
OcellO was chosen #1 of “TOP 8 Innovation Picks – Bringing hidden innovation to the surface” by Scientist.com. Click here for the ranking
Meet OcellO during the ELRIG-Forum 2017 in Darmstadt, Germany, 09 March 2017
Bram Herpers will give a presentation entitled:
Drug screening and profiling in patient derived cultured tissues: towards in vitro (pre)clinical trials
Feel free to contact Bram for a meeting via bram.herpers@ocello.nl.
More information about the conference, click here
OcellO licenses Organoid Technology from Hubrecht Organoid Technology to provide commercial screening services for cystic fibrosis and colon cancer
Leiden and Utrecht, The Netherlands; 30 January 2017 – OcellO BV announced today that it has entered into a licensing agreement with Hubrecht Organoid Technology (HUB) for use of Organoid Technology for cystic fibrosis and gastrointestinal diseases, including colon cancer. OcellO will add these organoid assays to its drug discovery services portfolio.
Organoids are mini-organs grown in cell culture from biopsies taken from patients and faithfully recapitulate the genetic and phenotypic characteristics of diseased tissues. Organoids have proven to be valuable disease models for the high-throughput screening and validation of innovative medicines, bypassing limitations associated with cell-line- and xenograft-based preclinical drug studies.
Leo Price, CEO of OcellO, said: “HUB Organoid Technology represent the state-of-the-art for in vitro modelling of drug responses and is expected to form a spearhead in OcellO’s service offering. This licensing agreement is the culmination of a highly successful 3 year EU-funded collaboration (FP7-SUPPRESstem) to develop panels of organoid assays for colon cancer drug discovery and we are delighted to be able to offer these and other organoid assays to our customers.”
Marcel Zwaal, CEO of HUB: “We connect with companies that are able to offer high value added services to our Organoid Technology and with OcellO we have been fortunate to add an expert partner in this field”.
About the HUB
Hubrecht Organoid Technology (HUB) is an organization founded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and the University Medical Center Utrecht. HUB exploits the pioneering work of Prof. Hans Clevers, who discovered methods to grow stem cell-derived human ‘mini-organs’ (HUB Organoids) from tissues of patients with various diseases. The organoids, that are part of the HUB biobanks, are characterized by genome sequencing, expression profiling and sensitivity to known and experimental drugs to establish a database linking genetic and transcriptional information to drug responsiveness. HUB offers licenses to its patented HUB Organoid Technology for drug-screening and access to organoids in the HUB biobanks for preclinical drug discovery and validation. In addition, HUB is performing clinical studies to validate the technologies use as a companion diagnostic. More info at www.hub4organoids.eu
About OcellO
OcellO is a CRO that offers drug screening and profiling services using 3D cell culture models of disease. OcellO uses high-content 3D imaging and analysis to measure drug effects, extracting clinically relevant information on compound effects. OcellO has developed a broad range of models for testing potential therapies to treat polycystic kidney disease, neurodegenerative disorders and, in particular, cancer. OcellO’s current 3D cancer models are developed from cell lines, patient derived xenograft tumours and patient tumour material, and include panels of lung, pancreas, breast, colon and gastric cancers.
CONTACT
Leo Price (CEO)
Phone: +31 71 3322 875
Email: leo.price@ocellO.nl
HUB
Robert Vries (COO)
Tel: +31 88 1236 301
OcellO and Charles River Laboratories announce their strategic partnership to provide translational in vitro PDX and in vivo PDX oncology drug discovery services
November 22, 2016 – Leiden, The Netherlands and Freiburg, Germany
Driven forward by the top ranking 2016 Eurostars program (value 1.5 mln euro) in both Germany and The Netherlands, OcellO and Charles River Laboratories launch their strategic partnership to provide unique integrated in vitro and in vivo oncology services using the Charles River collection of PDX tumour models. OcellO will use human tumour material from Charles River PDX models and apply these in their 3D cell culture drug screening platform. This high throughput platform enables the growth of micro-tumours in a natural extracellular matrix environment and uses automated 3D imaging to analyse the effects of small molecules and antibodies on tumour development. This approach will enable the screening of lead molecules in panels of PDX tumours in vitro, identifying the optimum tumour models for subsequent in vivo studies. The first series of in vitro PDX assays will be launched at the 28th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics taking place in Munich on 29th November.
PDX models utilise patient tumour material and are the gold standard for in vivo oncology drug testing. However, conventional in vitro methods using 2D monolayer cultures of transformed cell lines fail to adequately predict compound effects in vivo; due to serial passaging and selection, cell lines deviate from the original patient tumour. Furthermore, monolayer cultures fail to recapitulate the in vivo tumour architecture and tumour cell biology. The companion in vitro-in vivo PDX models offered by OcellO and Charles River overcome these problems. Using the same tumour material in vitro and in vivo enables a uniquely high translation between these models. This will reduce timelines, compound use and increase success rates in vivo.
Leo Price, CEO and founder of OcellO, commented: “The collaboration with Charles River to align in vitro and in vivo testing makes complete sense; using Charles River’s human tumour material in OcellO’s platform allows us to provide the most clinically relevant biology for in vitro testing to our customers and the direct translation to in vivo models represents an effective pipeline for early drug discovery. We are delighted to enter into this strategic partnership and expect that it will enable both companies to strengthen their position in the CRO oncology field.
“We are excited to combine OcellO’s 3D culture and imaging technology and Charles River’s patient derived xenograft (PDX) models,” said Aidan Synnott, Oncology Site Director for Charles River Laboratories. “This partnership will allow us to provide a more robust early discovery offering for our oncology clients. Our goal is to improve translational results for our clients, which will ultimately increase positive outcomes for patients.”
Charles River Laboratories provides essential products and services to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, government agencies and leading academic institutions around the globe accelerate their research and drug development efforts. In November 2015, Charles River announced the acquisition of Oncotest GmbH. With Oncotest, Charles River is able to leverage an extensive collection of more than 400 patient-derived xenograft (PDX) tumor models, as well as a full range of in vitro assays using both commercially available and proprietary PDX-derived cell lines.
OcellO is a CRO that offers drug screening and profiling services using 3D cell culture models of cancers and other diseases. OcellO uses high-content 3D imaging and analysis to measure drug effects, extracting clinically relevant information on compound effects.
For more information:
Leo Price, CEO
Phone: +31 71 3322 875
Email: leo.price@ocellO.nl
For more info on the Charles River Laboratories PDX collection visit the CR website here or contact holly.collette@crl.com
Meet OcellO during the 28th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics on November 29- December 2 2016 in Munich
We will be showcasing our latest in vitro human tumor models at booth D6.
To discuss how our technology can support your projects email us at info@ocello.nl to schedule a meeting during the conference.
More information about the conference, click here
Poster Abstracts at EORTC-NCI-AACR 2016:
A 3D image-based phenotypic screen of bi-specific antibodies targeting stem cells in a panel of patient derived colon carcinoma organoids
in vitro-in vivo translation: Phenotypic screening in PDX-derived tumor spheroids cultured in ECM in 384-well plates
September 2016 – New publication in Nature Reviews in Drug Discovery
Applying 3D cell culture and other innovative technologies in Modern Drug Discovery. Read the Nature Drug Discovery Reviews article co-authored by OcellO’s CEO, Leo Price.
23 August 2016- OcellO partners in NC3R-funded collaboration with Kings College to develop in vitro animal alternatives to patient derived mouse xenograft models of breast cancer.
OcellO partners in NC3R-funded collaboration with Kings College to develop 3D in vitro screening models to simulate patient derived xenograft mouse models of breast cancer. The collaboration with Prof. Andrew Tutt and Dr Rebecca Marlow, from Kings College London is valued at GBP 355,000 and will focus on the particularly aggressive ‘triple negative’ breast cancer subtype.
In the project, a panel of 3D in vitro models from tumour tissue from The KCL PDX collection will be developed and validated with standard of care therapies. These models will be added to OcellO’s portfolio of 3D tumour models and offered for fee-for-service screening.
See the link to the NC3R webstite for more details.
OcellO announces strategic outsourcing agreement with Synthon Biopharmaceuticals for compound testing in patient-derived tumour models
December 15th, 2015 – Leiden, The Netherlands
OcellO today announced continuation of the collaboration in discovery projects with Synthon Biopharmaceuticals whereby OcellO will provide services for high-content screening in patient-derived in vitro tissue models. OcellO will use panels of patient-derived 3D tumour models for testing of Synthon’s antibody-drug conjugates for its preclinical oncology research programs.
Patient-derived 3D tumour cultures bridge the gap between conventional cell line derived in vitro models and in vivo models. Furthermore, OcellO’s image-based analysis of 3D tissues provides more detailed insight into the effects of ADCs on tumour tissues compared to conventional growth and killing assays.
“The collaboration with Synthon builds on an earlier successful project and is an important recognition of the added value of our screening technology for the pre-clinical evaluation of drug performance. This is a great opportunity to apply our human tissue models to the development of state-of-the-art therapeutic molecules for the improvement of cancer treatment”, said Leo Price, CEO of OcellO.
Marco Timmers, CSO of Synthon, commented: “We are very excited about our partnership with OcellO. It allows Synthon to benefit from OcellO’s leading position in tissue based screening, which we expect will be beneficial for a number of projects in our pipeline”.
OcellO is a CRO that offers drug screening and profiling services using 3D cell culture models of cancers and other diseases. OcellO uses high-content 3D imaging and analysis to measure drug effects, extracting clinically relevant information on compound effects. For more information, contact Leo Price (Leo.Price@OcellO.nl) or visit the website (www.OcellO.nl).