Immunostained gallbladder organoid. Microscope: Stellaris 5 Lightning mode (Leica Microsystems)

  • Nucleus
  • Membrane glycoproteins
  • Beta-catenin
  • Cytokeratin 19

research summary

Despite the availability of modern diagnostic techniques and plethora of treatment options, the therapeutic outcome in patients suffering from different cancers is still not satisfactory. One of the key reasons for this sub-optimal outcome is heterogeneity, both at the genetic and epigenetic level, resulting in widely varied therapeutic responses between individual patients. To address this, it is essential that we adopt an individualised approach in studying cancer.
Patient Derived Organoid (PDO) models are relatively new type of 3D tissue culture system that recapitulate the key structural, functional and molecular aspects of the patient organs more closely than their 2D cell line counterparts. At the same time, these personalised ex vivo models are amenable for high throughput studies unlike the xenograft animal models.
Our group is currently invested in developing and exploiting PDO models of solid tumours to understand disease biology, identify alternative therapeutic targets and establish drug response profiling (DRP) platform with the aim of providing personalised treatment for cancer patients.

Note: Academic or industry groups who want to collaborate or partner with us are always welcome to discuss the possibilities. "Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." – Helen Keller

Current Projects

Gallbladder Cancer (GBC) study

  • Developing a living PDO biobank of GBC and other gallbladder diseases.

  • Understanding GBC pathogenesis using molecular and biochemical characterisations of clinical samples and PDO models.

  • Find alternative therapeutic approaches.

Breast Cancer (BRC) study

  • Developing PDO models from HER2-enriched and triple-negative breast cancer biopsy tissues.

  • Establishing DRP platform using PDOs to predict treatment response in BRC patients.

Biomaterial study

  • Testing synthetic tuneable biocompatible hydrogels as an alternative to conventional murine sarcoma derived matrix to grow PDOs for drug assays.

News

  • ICMR funded new project initiated in March, 2024. Project: Drug response profiling of PDO models to design personalised chemotherapy for breast cancer patients.

    PI (non-clinical): Dr Dwijit GuhaSarkar;

    PI: (clinical): Dr Sanjit Kr Agrawal.

  • SOLi3D team participating at the Annual Review of TTCRC, Tata Medical Center, Kolkata in February, 2024. L to R: Pritha, Payel, Shinjini, Nandita, Ankita, Archana, Dwijit.

  • Ankita presenting poster at the conference on ‘Organoids for disease modelling’ organized by European Molecular Biology Organization at Heidelberg, Germany in October, 2023.

  • Nandita and Shinjini presenting poster at 43rd Annual Conference of the Indian Association for Cancer Research at IISER-Pune in January, 2024.

  • SOLi3D members along with FORE team members attending 43rd IACR conference at IISER-Pune in January, 2024. L to R: Shinjini, Tanima, Nandita, Arijit and Dwijit.

  • Payel attending International Conference on Advances in 3D Cell Culture at Mumbai in February, 2024.

  • Ms Arpita Chakravarty (extreme left) and Ms Shrabanti Sarkar Ghosh (extreme right) joined the SOLi3D team as Intern and Clinical Research Coordinator, respectively.

  • Payel attending a training course in microscopic techniques at NCBS, Bengaluru in July, 2024.