Researchers from the Physiology and Pharmacology departments and the Centre for Neuroendocrinology (CNE) in the Faculty of Health Sciences are making a national impact with their exiting work developing advanced cell culture models to probe cancer biology, cancer pharmacology, and blood brain barrier physiology.

What started as a PhD project under supervision of Dr Iman van den Bout in the Department of Physiology, has now spread to be a cornerstone technology in laboratories in the Physiology and Pharmacology departments as well as the CNE.

In the last few months, researchers from these departments and their students won five prizes at three different national conferences. Students working with the BT-20 spheroid model developed by Dr van den Bout and adopted thereafter by Professor Werner Cordier, walked away with all three student presentation prizes at the inaugural Society for Advanced Cell Culture Models in Africa conference.

Keith Ncube and Cara de Moura, both supervised by Prof Cordier, won the best presentation and best flash talk prize respectively, and Mandy Naude, supervised by Dr Ross Anderson from Physiology and the CNE, won the best poster prize. At the same time, Jaime de Carvalho, supervised by Dr Brian Flepisi from Pharmacology won the best poster prize at the SA Society for Basic and Clinical Pharmacology. Dr van den Bout presented his work on establishing a cancer organoid bank for Black African breast cancer patients at the Tshwane Medical Research Conference. He won  third prize for his presentation.

So what is all the fuss about?

Since the 1970s medical researchers have made use of cell lines isolated form patients, immortalised, and grown in flasks in a broth containing all the elements needed for survival. While easy and cheap, this 2D environment was a poor approximation of how cells live and function in the body, which is a complex 3D environment.

Six years ago, Dr van den Bout started with 3D cell culture by growing breast cancer cells in spheroids; these are tiny balls of cells that resemble small tumours. Using these spheroids, he showed that some potential anticancer drugs that were very effective at killing cancer cells in 2D had no effect on the same cells when grown in 3D. Prof Cordier adopted this model and has used it to study cancer drug resistance in breast cancer.

Now, Dr van den Bout is establishing the first South African panel of breast cancer organoids isolated from Black African patients. Organoids are a more complex system allowing for the survival and expansion of the cancer stem cells resident in tumours. This allows researchers to study complex topics such as drug response in the heterogeneous tumour population, subpopulation linage evolution during chemotherapy, and cell biology of different tumour types.

Outside of cancer research, other models such as the blood-brain barrier model being developed by Dr Flepisi, Dr Marissa from Pharmacology and Dr van den Bout will enable researchers to investigate the ability of drugs to pass this barrier to enter the brain.

The exciting thing is that a critical mass of expertise is now concentrating within the Faculty of Health Sciences at TUKS that will drive innovation and understanding, keeping us at the forefront of medical research in South Africa. There is definitely more to come!

From left: Cara de Moura, Jaime de Carvalho, Dr Iman van den Bout, Keith Ncube, Mandy Naude.