On Wednesday, October 11, 2023 at 1 pm New York/ 6 pm London/ 7 pm Berlin, Dr. Anke Brüning-Richardson from University of Huddersfield, UK, will talk about targeting brain tumor dissemination – opportunities for replacing pre-clinical in vivo studies in an aggressive cancer type.
Brain tumors remain difficult to treat cancers with poor patient outcome due to their heterogeneity, ability to become drug-resistant and highly invasive in nature. Treatment options are limited which are based on surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Despite this aggressive treatment regime high grade tumours such as Glioblastoma (GBM) will recur within 18 months leading to the death of the patient. A novel way to target these tumours and prolong survival in patients is the use of migrastatic drugs that target cell migration and dissemination in combination with conventional treatment. As for other cancers, pre-clinical in vivo studies are prominent in brain tumour research. I will discuss the opportunities to reduce animal numbers used for pre-clinical in vivo studies based on the latest developments in three dimensional (3D) in vitro assays with a view to eventually replacing in vivo studies. A summary of existing and new preclinical assays will be presented with the newest
research development from her laboratory to highlight opportunities in the cancer field for replacement of animals in cancer research studies.
Biosketch:
Originally from Frankfurt am Main, Dr. Anke Brüning-Richardson relocated to the United Kingdom to take up her undergraduate studies at Imperial College, London, in Biology followed by a PhD in Parasitology under the supervision of Professor Elizabeth Canning. Her first postdoctoral position at the Pirbright Institute, UK, allowed her to see through the development from the bench to pen-side of the first rapid diagnostic lateral flow test for the detection of rinderpest virus, which was crucial for detection of last foci of rinderpest infections in the field as part of the Global Rinderpest Eradication Program (GREP). Based on her interest in developing novel drugs and diagnostics in the veterinary and medical fields, Anke has been working in cancer research for the last 17 years focussing on how to treat cancers such as ovarian cancer and brain tumours. She is a Senior Lecturer in biomedicine at the University of Huddersfield and heads the Neuro-oncology group investigating
novel ways to target brain tumours using 3D pre-clinical in vitro models.