The University of Glasgow's Glasgow Precision Oncology Laboratory (GPOL) is a molecular research facility that partners with the

NHS The National Health Service (NHS) is the term for the publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern ...

and industry to perform research into the development of novel

therapeutic A therapy or medical treatment is the attempted remediation of a health problem, usually following a medical diagnosis. Both words, ''treatment'' and ''therapy'', are often abbreviated tx, Tx, or Tx. As a rule, each therapy has indications an ...

strategies, the creation of pan-cancer genomic assays and provide knowledge transfer for healthcare systems to enable them to develop landscapes for therapeutic testing in

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

. GPOL's integrated structure is designed to take scientific ideas through

preclinical In drug development, preclinical development (also termed preclinical studies or nonclinical studies) is a stage of research that begins before clinical trials (testing in humans) and during which important feasibility, iterative testing and dr ...

studies to

translation Translation is the communication of the semantics, meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The English la ...

into the

clinic A clinic (or outpatient clinic or ambulatory care clinic) is a health facility that is primarily focused on the care of outpatients. Clinics can be privately operated or publicly managed and funded. They typically cover the primary care needs ...

. GPOL combines research expertise in targeted capture and

whole-genome sequencing Whole genome sequencing (WGS), also known as full genome sequencing or just genome sequencing, is the process of determining the entirety of the DNA sequence of an organism's genome at a single time. This entails sequencing all of an organism's ...

, cancer bioinformatics and the development of patient pathways in precision oncology in routine

healthcare Health care, or healthcare, is the improvement or maintenance of health via the preventive healthcare, prevention, diagnosis, therapy, treatment, wikt:amelioration, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other disability, physic ...

. GPOL performs tests for discovery work on patient tumours, including whole-genome sequencing and

RNA-seq RNA-Seq (named as an abbreviation of RNA sequencing) is a technique that uses next-generation sequencing to reveal the presence and quantity of RNA molecules in a biological sample, providing a snapshot of gene expression in the sample, also k ...

, and experiments to understand models of disease, particularly genetically engineered mouse models, by defining their genomic mutational landscapes and

transcriptome The transcriptome is the set of all RNA transcripts, including coding and non-coding, in an individual or a population of cells. The term can also sometimes be used to refer to all RNAs, or just mRNA, depending on the particular experiment. The ...

, and providing molecular

phenotype In genetics, the phenotype () is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology (physical form and structure), its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological propert ...

s for clinical trials development in

oncology Oncology is a branch of medicine that deals with the study, treatment, diagnosis, and prevention of cancer. A medical professional who practices oncology is an ''oncologist''. The name's Etymology, etymological origin is the Greek word ὄγ ...

. GPOL uses international data, including that collected by the

International Cancer Genome Consortium The International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) is a voluntary scientific organization that provides a forum for collaboration among the world's leading cancer and genomic researchers. The ICGC was launched in 2008 to coordinate large-scale ca ...

(ICGC),

The Cancer Genome Atlas The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) is a project to catalogue the genomic alterations responsible for cancer using genome sequencing and bioinformatics. The overarching goal was to apply high-throughput genome analysis techniques to improve the abili ...

and Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG), to create the suite of Glasgow Cancer Assays (also known as the Glasgow Cancer Test and the Clinical Cancer Genome) – standardised pan-cancer assays covering adult solid tumours and haematological cancers for use by

healthcare systems A health system, health care system or healthcare system is an organization of people, institutions, and resources that delivers health care services to meet the health needs of target populations. There is a wide variety of health systems aroun ...

and researchers worldwide. The Glasgow Cancer Assays are currently in use for testing patients for clinical trials but, with the aim of incorporating the test in routine healthcare as part of a learning healthcare system (LHS,) are being evaluated by the UK's NHS and a network of cancer centres in Italy. The Glasgow Cancer Assays are licensed to

Agilent Technologies Agilent Technologies, Inc. is an American global company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, that provides instruments, software, services, and consumables for laboratories. Agilent was established in 1999 as a spin-off from Hewlett-Packar ...

on a non-exclusive basis for global distribution for research.

History

In 2015,

pancreatic cancer Pancreatic cancer arises when cell (biology), cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a Neoplasm, mass. These cancerous cells have the malignant, ability to invade other parts of ...

surgeon-scientist Professor Andrew Biankin AO was appointed Regius Surgeon and Director of the Wolfson Wohl Cancer Research Centre, part of the Institute of Cancer Sciences at the University of Glasgow. He is Director of the Glasgow Precision Oncology Laboratory and executive director and Chairman of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (from 2018). In 2016 Professor Biankin established the Glasgow Precision Oncology Laboratory (GPOL) at the University of Glasgow to enable translational cancer research and to advance novel therapeutic strategies for cancer for academic research and industry. GPOL is located at the Wolfson Wohl Cancer Research Centre at the University of Glasgow Garscube campus, with both wet and dry labs and a high-performance compute cluster. There is close collaboration with the CRUK Beatson Institute. GPOL's purpose-built capacity, expertise, infrastructure and resources are designed to accelerate therapeutic development from discovery through to preclinical development and clinical implementation. GPOL's capabilities were first used to support the Precision-Panc pancreatic cancer clinical trials with the development of a genomic test panel for screening patients in 2017.

GPOL divisions and activities

Candidate molecular processes are identified in the Therapeutic Development Division, led by Professor Biankin, where model systems are used extensively to test for efficacy of therapeutics, while looking for signals that include tumour response and survival. When a preclinical platform of evidence is compelling enough to support testing in the clinic, it moves into the Clinical Development Division, led by Dr David Chang, for testing in clinical trials. The Medical Genomics Division, led by GPOL's Deputy Director, Dr Susanna Cooke, develop methods for picking up the same signals in patients and deliver molecular profiling for clinical trials.

References

{{reflist Cancer genomics

Cancer organisations based in the United Kingdom Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal ...

Genetics in the United Kingdom

Research in the United Kingdom Research is creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge. It involves the collection, organization, and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness to ...

University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

2016 establishments in Scotland