BIP Acceleration 2024 awards i3S technology to personalize leukemia treatments
The ‘MYLeukaemia Therapy Guidance Chipset’ project, led by researchers from the Bioengineered 3D Microenvironments group at i3S, won the 2024 edition of BIP Acceleration, an initiative by U.Porto Inovação aimed at University teams wishing to test and validate their business model. This involves a platform that recreates a human bone marrow ‘avatar’ in the laboratory, using cutting-edge ‘Organ-on-Chip’ technology.
This avatar, according to project leader Hugo Caires, “allows ex vivo testing of how each patient’s cancer cells react to different therapeutic lines. This will enable prediction of the most appropriate treatment for each patient, based on personalised analysis.” The project, he adds, “has already proven that human bone marrow avatars faithfully recreate many of the pathological changes observed in leukaemia patients.”
This innovative platform, says Sílvia Bidarra, a member of the team, “promises to transform the way doctors treat leukaemia patients, enabling a personalised approach to choosing the most effective therapies.” In addition to considering the genetic alterations of tumour cells—the basis of traditional treatments—this approach differs from the conventional one by also considering “the bone marrow microenvironment, which is often a refuge for cancer cells against treatments.”
MYLeukaemia can shed new light on patient risk stratification and the selection of more targeted therapies, especially for patients who have had an uncertain response to current treatments. “Although not yet a definitive solution, this technology can significantly improve disease management and, in the long term, pave the way for new, more effective therapies”, stresses Hugo Caires.
For the team of Hugo Caires (i3S), Sílvia Bidarra (i3S), Mariana Magalhães (i3S/FEUP), Hugo Prazeres (i3S), and Cristina Barrias (i3S/ICBAS), winning first place in BIP Acceleration is “extremely gratifying”. The five-thousand-euro prize, in addition to demonstrating recognition for the platform’s transformative nature, will enable progress in ex vivo preclinical trials. “The next steps will be to validate the platform with tumour samples from real patients in a pilot study”, reveals Mariana Magalhães.
The University of Porto’s Vice-Rector for Research and Innovation, Pedro Rodrigues, expressed his great satisfaction at seeing so many projects with market potential and thanked all participants for their work, as well as the jury comprising Raquel Gaião Silva (Faber), Raphael Stanzani (UPTEC), and Rodrigo de Alvarenga (Porto Business School).