Diagnostic Platform for Personalized Chemosensitivity Assays - Robust Results via Process Automation

Abstract

Individualized cancer therapy, as part of personalized medicine, aims for an optimal treatment with minimal side effects. In chemotherapy, one approach is to screen for the most potent combination of chemotherapeutics (chemotherapeutic scheme) to improve quality of life and achieve a high therapy efficacy. Due to high personnel costs associated with the first generation of manual chemosensitivity assays most health insurance providers do not cover this type of therapy. Also, the outcome of such personalized assays has to be proven first. The fully automated DiagnoSYS platform technology is a system effectively using the potential of chemosensitivity assays. It was shown that with an adequate degree of automation, higher reproducibility was achieved. An ATP/TCA assay was used as the first demonstrator assay. Integrated tissue preparation, based on precise regulation of a Miltenyi Biotec M-or C-Tube, combined with magnetic cell enrichment and depletion via EpCAM and CD90 labeling and luminescence based cell vitality measurements, made it possible to enhance the signal to noise ratio of luminescence readings. The platform technology is based on the internationally accepted SBS-format. Therefore, all processing steps, from tissue preparation to luminescence or fluorescence readings, could rapidly and easily be exchanged, and allows for processing different assay approaches, such as ATP/TCA or prognostic biomarkers as uPA/PAI-1, on the same platform. As a result of modular programming, further processing steps could also be implemented without difficulty. Besides the optimization and standardization of personalized assays, cost reduction, which goes hand in hand with automation, will make the platform affordable for research groups and clinical personnel, amplifying the acceptance of personalized medicine approaches in the future.