Drug screening for combinations or single agents can be demanding and tedious. At the Netherlands Cancer Institute Robotics and Screening Center (NRSC), potential drug combinations that either restore or enhance clinical response are selected based on large-scale genomic screening projects which combine genomic datasets including clinical data. The Institute’s HP D300 Digital Dispenser offers accurate, flexible and user-friendly experimental set-up for these combination studies, saving valuable time.
The NRSC uses an advanced technology platform to perform large-scale, high throughput screening projects with cell-based or biochemical assays. These screens enable researchers to identify novel targets for cancer therapy and understand the mechanism of action of novel drugs, as well as to identify resistance mechanisms and determine effective drug combinations for specific patient groups carrying defined genetic alterations. In this presentation, the NRSC’s workflow for identification of drug combinations and follow-up drug synergy studies using the HP D300 will be presented.
Join our webinar as we examine the potential for change in dose-response curve set-up, including a Question and Answer session with all presenters.
Dr Roderick Beijersbergen is working at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in the division Molecular Carcinogenesis. He obtained his PhD in cell cycle regulation in 1996 at the Netherlands Cancer Institute after which he did his postdoctoral research in the group of Prof Dr. Weinberg at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Boston, MA, USA. In this period he was involved in the identification of the gene that encodes the catalytic subunit of telomerase and demonstrated that the activation of the telomerase gene is essential for the survival of human tumor cells. In 1999 he returned to the Netherlands Cancer Institute as an independent group leader focusing on the regulation of telomerase.
During the last years his work involves the design, construction and application of large scale RNA interference libraries to perform loss-of-function genetic screens in mammalian cells. He has developed the novel screening method of pooled shRNA screening. This technology is applied to identify the mechanism of action of anti-cancer drugs and genes involved in resistance. He is also head of the NKI Screening and Robotics Center where large scale automated cell based assays using High content imaging for complex phenotypes are performed. With these technologies he aims to identify synthetic lethal interactions in human cells with the goal to identify novel drug targets for the treatment of cancer and other disease.
Dr Pasi Halonen obtained his Ph. D. in enzyme kinetics and protein structure-function relationships studying inorganic pyrophosphatase, an ubiquitously expressed enzyme in energy metabolism at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and the University of Turku, Finland in 2005. After his Ph. D., he continued as a staff scientist at the Technical Research Center of Finland (VTT) in high-throughput screening of novel biocatalysts of bacterial and fungal origin for food, pulp and nanoindustry. He also applied the high-throughput screening technologies using genomic and chemical tools, such as siRNA and drug libraries and protein microarrays, to identify novel drug targets and disease mechanisms in oncology.
During the last years, he has worked at the Robotics and Screening Center at the Netherlands Cancer Institute to develop, execute and analyze the siRNA and drug assays with spectroscopic as well as protein and image based readouts in collaboration with the researchers at NKI. Most recently, he has been developing novel tools for drug synergy studies as well as 3D mammalian cell culture models from patient-derived samples to rapidly identify and test more efficient drug combinations of critical clinical relevance.
With more than 10 years of experience in the life science industry, Jessica is the Product Manager for the HP D300 at Tecan Switzerland. Before, she worked in both sales and application support for liquid handling platforms in Tecan US. Prior, she held positions within Biotech Research, focusing on assay development using cell based assays.