Objective
Personalized medicine aspires to provide optimal therapy in real-time during patient treatment, however current methodology falls short to deliver this in a robust manner. With this in mind, we invented a method for the screening of thousands of drug responses in small samples of an individual’s peripheral blood by automated microscopy and single-cell image analysis. We termed this method pharmacoscopy. In the course of carrying out the i-FIVE ERC grant project plan, we began screening for novel anti-viral or immune modulating drugs. In the quest to increase the physiological relevance of our screening settings, we investigated the possibility of using peripheral blood cells or bone marrow from individuals. We have thus far been able to show that the approach allows for the screening of anti-inflammatory properties of compounds, and to score for distinct sub-population specific cell cytotoxicity profiles of clinical anti-neoplastic agents through the tracking of fluorescent antibodies and probes. Moreover, we have been able to show that the approach empowers the therapeutic decision-making capability of hema-oncologists in a concrete clinical setting using primary myelofibrosis and lymphoma as test diseases. With funding from this grant, we intend to obtain further clinical data through retrospective trials, and incorporate the results into an information package attractive enough to draw the attention of potential investors. We have secured the intellectual property rights and have assembled the know-how required to enable commercialization efforts. With the unique image-based single cell analysis of human liquid tissues, we believe that chemos has the potential to develop into a service that enables and advances personalized medicine and drug discovery for a broad spectrum of hematological disorders.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-POC - Proof of Concept GrantHost institution
1090 Wien
Austria