GRACE ONCOLOGY
PERSONALIZED CYTOMETRIC PROFILING - BEHIND THE SCENES
Some people want to know how cytometric profiling tests actually are performed. Here is how it works.
1. A biopsy sample containing a mixture of living cancer cells and other cell types is removed from your body by means of a surgery or other biopsy procedure.
2. Special techniques are applied to keep your cells alive during overnight transit to the laboratory of Larry Weisenthal, M.D., Ph.D..
- Dr. Weisenthal and his staff of technologists will perform the actual laboratory testing portion of your personalized chemotherapy profile.
3. In the laboratory, the mixed-cell biopsy specimen is dissociated, leaving intact mainly cancer cells and endothelial cells.
- It is important to retain endothelial cells within the specimen in order to test the new, targeted, anti-angiogenesis agents.
- Great care is taken throughout specimen processing to avoid harming your living cells.
- Your cancer cells are maintained as three dimensional cell clusters throughout the testing process in order to preserve normal cell to cell signaling which materially influences sensitivity and/or resistance to chemotherapy drugs.
4. Your living cancer cell clusters are distributed among several 96-well polystyrene microtiter plates. Each well contains approximately 10,000 of your cancer cells.
5. A different anti-cancer drug or drug combination is added to each microtiter plate well.
- Each drug is tested at two concentrations for greater accuracy.
- Positive and negative controls are also used for each drug.
6. Your cells are held under carefully temperature and CO2 controlled incubator conditions during a 96 hour exposure period.
- Your cells are not "grown" or multiplied as in older methods as this could skew your test results.
- The testing process is not intended to precisely replicate what occurs in the human body - that would be impossible. Instead, the drug exposure conditions and drug concentrations were meticulously calibrated over many years of assay development to achieve the highest possible rate of correlation between what happens in the laboratory and what happens in your body.
8. Once your cells have finished their exposure period the cell killing effect of each drug upon the cancer cells is measured using at least three and as many as five different laboratory technologies.
- Multiple tests are used for increased accuracy and to obtain the maximum amount of information about your cancer cells.
- Each technology evaluates tumor cell killing in a manner complementary to that of the other technologies Dr. Weisenthal applies for you.
- The choice of technologies used for your comprehensive analysis is based upon your cancer type, the specific drugs being tested for you, and factors relating to your individual biopsy specimen.
9. Each, separate drug activity measurement is then analyzed by Dr. Weisenthal, personally. He meticulously examines and interprets dozens of microscope slides upon which your cells (these were stained and counterstained to reveal specific cellular features) are mounted.
10. Dr. Weisenthal integrates data from each of the different tests carried-out for you and performs computer comparisons of your test results against an extensive, multi-parametric index database.
- This is a critical step that converts otherwise crude cell killing data into information that is meaningful, highly specific to you, and clinically-useful for you and Dr. Grace.
- Dr. Weisenthal compiled his database laboriously over a twenty-five year period. It is far more detailed than databases used by any other laboratory in the world. The aim is to achieve the highest level of accuracy and clinical relevance for you.
11. Your cytometric profile data, consisting of patterns of sensitivity or resistance to each drug and drug combination tested for you, are then reported to Dr. Grace.
12. Dr. Grace uses the information, along with his through knowledge of your specific illness, medical history, and physical condition to design the chemotherapy treatment strategy that offers you the highest probability for success.
