The Strategic Programmes Office of Pathology ACP garners collaborations between institutions and allows clinicians and scientists to work closely in research and development through different platforms. Examples of ongoing platforms include:
Circulating Tumour Cell Center of Research Excellence (CTC CoRE) was established in January 2014 as a result of a collaborative effort between National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS) and Clearbridge BioMedics, in partnership with the Pathology Department of Singapore General Hospital (SGH). CTC CoRE is located in the newly-opened Academia building situated in SGH. It is fully equipped with the cytology, cytogenetic, histology and molecular biology platform.
The aim of CTC CoRE is to provide an accurate, fast, economical and non-invasive cancer diagnosis using blood biopsy. In future, we hope blood biopsy can be used as a surrogate biomarker for biopsy which is useful to replace the conventional surgery and CT scan procedures currently used to monitor patients’ response to treatment.
A simple blood draw of 7.5 ml is sufficient for a CTC test using the ClearCell®-FX system to separate circulating tumour cells from other blood components. Using cytology and cytogenetics techniques, the number of cancer cells can be enumerated and documented. Potential applications include tracking mutation patterns in cancer cells across the time of treatment using the next generation sequencing facility at POLARIS laboratory.
CTC CoRE hopes to provide data to facilitate clinicians to effectively monitor patients’ response to therapy and better management of the cancer therapy programme. Currently, CTC CoRE research and development team is driven towards developing a service for “CTC test” by end of the year which will be the first servicing center for CTC isolation, enumeration and characterization in Singapore and Asia using a platform technology developed locally.
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