Analysing new treatment options for Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma (ACC)

Full project title: Analysis of new therapeutic options for adenoid cystic carcinoma

Tag: New treatment

Alexandra Rose

Project type:
PhD Research

Project Leader:
Dr Amanda Swain
Professor Kevin Harrington

Researcher:
Alexandra Rose

Commencement date:
October 2016

Length of project:
4 years

Funding provided:
£155,070

Funder:
See above

Location:
The Institute of Cancer Research

The problem The research The future

The problem

New and improved therapies are urgently required for ACC, with the 15 year survival rate as low as 40%. One reason for this low rate is that ACC recurrence is common and often spreads to the lungs and perineural space, where the tumour develops chemotherapy resistance which significantly reduces treatment options.

The research

Oracle is funding a four-year PhD student, Alexandra Rose working under the supervision of Dr Amanda Swain and Professor Kevin Harrington to work on determining whether existing targeted therapies may be effective in treatment ACC of the salivary glands.

The aim of the project is to investigate the mechanism of drug activity on ACC growth and identify new therapies targeted to specific tumour mutations.

The future

Excitingly, Alexandra and the team at the ICR have identified a promising novel drug combination for the treatment of ACC and are continuing to investigate how it works. On top of this, they have established the first reported ACC 3D organoid models; cells in a dish that closely resemble normal human salivary glands. These ‘mini organs’ can be used to test the new drug combination and provide evidence that will inform the development of novel clinical trials in patients!

Alexandra won a prize at the 2018 British Association for Cancer Research (BACR) student conference for her poster entitled “Development of patient-derived salivary Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma pre-clinical models to assess novel therapeutic options”.