Long Island research center, NY hospitals join forces to find cancer treatments

Some of the world’s finest scientists live in a former whaling village on the North Shore of Long Island, in a compound reminiscent of an army post.

In this pastoral setting, they have very self-consciously taken themselves out of the real world into a cerebral one, where they are searching for the genetic origins of cancer and the drugs to cure it.

But despite the many breakthroughs that have taken place here, at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, there is one thing that has been lacking: human subjects.

To remedy that shortcoming, the lab is about to embark on a new collaboration between pure science and clinical science with North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, a nearby hospital system that can offer a wealth of patients to study.

“The hardest part of doing clinical research is enrolling patients in clinical trials,” said Dr. Kevin J. Tracey, chief executive of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research at North Shore-L.I.J. “You have to have lots and lots of patients.”

Much cancer research is now focused on matching treatments to the genetic makeup of a tumor or even a patient. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is a pioneer in using three-dimensional methods to culture tumor cells, as opposed to the conventional two-dimensional cultures many laboratories use. In these three-dimensional cultures, tumor cells form beach-ball-like structures of hundreds of cells called organoids, which better mimic the way cancer functions in real life. Its scientists also study cancer tumors in mice.

Read full original article: Cold Spring Harbor Lab, Seeking Human Subjects, Teams Up With Hospital System

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