Nariman Ansari

Developing a new drug from bench to bedside requires up to 10 years and investments between 0,8 and 1,1 billion US Dollars, according to the recent published data by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  As many as 90% of new drug candidates fail during the clinical development stage. 

New assays predicting the efficacy of drugs in the early, pre-clinical stage and which prevent animal testing are required to reduce both the development time and the costs in drug development. Modern assays are performed with three-dimensional cell cultures. They essentially avoid hard and flat surfaces. Hence, they favor less constrained physiological sample dynamics and promote cells growth under tissue-like conditions. This improves the reliability and the physiological significance of the assay.

We develop three-dimensional cultures of tumor cell spheroids for phenotypic drug screening issues. The cultivated spheroids resemble their microenvironment and serve as a model for tumors in the living organism. We evaluate the therapeutic benefits as well as the toxicity of drug candidates in breast, liver and brain tumor spheroids by means of advanced light microscopy (Figure 1). We also develop a fluorescence imaging workstation for three-dimensional cultures based on LSFM that allows dynamic long-term observations of living three-dimensional cultures. Furthermore, we provide new solution to handle huge 3D data sets that arise from a time-lapse experiment, including multiple view angles and hundreds of samples by adapted data analysis algorithms and workflows (Figure 2).

Next to cancer research, we also expect to promote novel scientific approaches in modern 3D cell biology like tissue homeostasis and development, inflammation, membrane dynamics and immunology.