The ACRF Centre for Advanced Cancer Genomics, housed at the Perkins in the world-class ACRF Single Cell Sequencing Centre, is helping local medical researchers build an in-depth knowledge of the varying cell types that make up a person’s tumour. The information that the centre can generate is offering new insights into how cancer cells evolve and interact with normal cells, with the ultimate goal to produce new personalised treatments for patients.
Tumours are complex entities that are composed of many different cell types, both cancerous and non-cancerous cells from different parts of the body. In the past, medical researchers have taken a lump of tumour and compared it with normal tissue or similar tumours and averaged the results. Meaning that patients were prescribed treatments based on the typical best practice for their cancer type. Now with the next-generation equipment at the ACRF Centre for Advanced Cancer Genomics, researchers are able to visualise thousands of cells within a complex tumour tissue. This allows for the analysis of individual cells inside a tumour, with the hope of tailoring a treatment plan that could treat every cell that tumour is made up of.
The team comprises a small group of highly trained and experienced doctors, technologists and medical physicists who specialise in medical imaging and have extensive experience in clinical as well preclinical imaging. Additionally the facility has a care technician with many years of preclinical experience.
