jkirshner

American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), American Cancer Society (ACS), and National Cancer Institute (NCI) are good sources for reliable information on cancer. There are many sites that talk about cancer, but if you want information based on research (both lab and clinical) these three provide the most trustworthy information.

Regarding tests, some are already available, such as mammography, and many people are working on creating molecular diagnostics that can identify cancer early from a blood sample. A few blood tests already exist, such as CA125 for ovarian cancer, PSA for prostate, CEA for colon.

Thanks for the suggestion, we will add the links to the NIH repository for the papers that are available.

Regarding automation, the Raman spectroscopy studies was done in collaboration with a colleague at Purdue University, so at the moment, we don't have plans to extend these studies.

However, we are working on automating our workflow to streamline the set-up and analysis of our cultures. So, if you know anyone working on bio lab-related automation, we'd love an intro.

Yes, absolutely. Our platform provides physiologically relevant 3D environment that recapitulates the native conditions seen in human tissues. Moreover, unlike the models with immortalized cells lines, which for many cancers are not representative of the disease, our platform sustains primary cells from patients. Our studies demonstrate that our platform has high correlation with clinical response (i.e. how cells respond to drugs in our system matches how the patient responds).

The short answer is, ideally yes, but not completely. The animal models of cancer are poor at predicting how the drug will work in a human, but where they have value is in evaluation of drug safety. So, we envision that the toxicity studies would still be done in animals, but near-human, organ-specific models would ultimately replace animal studies of drug efficacy.

Thanks! I asked TechCrunch to fix the company name.

Our platform is a cell-based laboratory tool where we reconstruct the environment of human organs in a dish. When cells are placed in these physiological conditions, they behave the way they would behave in the human body (unlike the conventional models where cells are grown on a surface of plastic dishes). Such set-up allows us to evaluate how cancer cells will respond to drugs (or drug combinations) under native conditions of drug-resistance. I.e. when cancer cells interact with their environment in the human organs, this environment protects them against chemotherapy and other drugs, so when cells are taken out of their physiological environment, they become more sensitive to drugs. This results in a false assumption that the drug has anti-cancer activity, but when it's introduced into a patient, the drug doesn't work.

What we provide, is a system where drugs can be tested under the conditions similar to those seen by the cancer cells in the human.

What we are offering right now, are services to test drugs in our system, and we are gearing-up to provide all-inclusive kits that can be used by researchers to run these assays in their own labs.

Please let us know if you would like know things in more detail.

Hey everyone,

Please let us know if we can answer any questions about what we do, the current state of cancer treatment, or anything about cancer, in general.

Julia (CEO, Ixchel Scientific; www.ixchelsci.com)