November 2011
Jan Gerrit Schuurman
The Cambridge turn
In the history of this blog, the three boys Coen (alias Erik), Peter and Jan presented themselves as hobbits. The hobbits have been joined by a fellowship. Hence we speak of fellows.
It was a meeting of fellows. José Baselga, Matthew Meyerson, Mike Stratton, Stephen Friend, David Tuveson, Lex Eggermont and Hans Clevers met in Christ College, Cambridge. They were joined by a delegation from Inspire2Live and Alpe d’HuZes.
They met not far from the room where Charles Darwin took his lodgings during his happy years in Cambridge. Darwin entered Christ College in 1828, in order to become a clergyman. But he left Cambridge in 1831 to embark on one of the greatest scientific expeditions of mankind: the voyage of the Beagle.
With some playfulness, we can speak of the ABC meeting: Amsterdam, Boston and Cambridge opened the cooperative game called The Discovery Network. Darwin himself embarked on the voyage of the Beagle, which changed his life and made him the greatest biologists ever. With a sense of drama and the wish to look further than we were able so far, the Discovery Network conference took place in the Mountbatten Room. Here we sat, talked, deliberated. Here our Beagle sailed out. The three boys had sat out the search for life in Princeton under the eyes of Einstein and Freeman Dyson as our first fellowman. Shortly after meeting Freeman Dyson, they met, Harald Varmus, Paul Nurse and James Watson. This is our next big step.
Under the eyes of Darwin
Under the eyes of Darwin a great discussion took place. Egos were put aside as if they were cloaks. We sat there, the researchers and clinicians presented their work and very fast some hurdles were taken.
One of the most crucial was the sharing of scientific data and the exchange of results. Hans, Mike and Matthew agreed to work towards a common framework in which the three institutes will work together.
The speed of information exchange was fast. All people in the room were making notes. Some excitement took hold when we realized that all parties were willing to put hands together and cooperate.
Dave Tuveson gave a fantastic account of his work on Pancreatic Cancer. José immediately started to look for ways to bring in his exceptional expertise and capabilities to work together with patients. Stephen stepped in and sketched the architecture of a discovery engine. And Hans Clevers… kept some of the best news for later.
The Discovery Network
A press release stated the following: “The Discovery Network conference will be remembered for two reasons. First in creating the network that made the decisive move to finally focus on pancreatic cancer: one of the nastiest and least treatable cancers we know. Secondly, in laying the foundations for breakthrough cooperation between the two leading genomics research institutes in the world; the Broad Institute in Cambridge Ma USA, the Sanger Institute in the UK and the Hubrecht Institute for Stemcell Research in Utrecht. Their combined expertise and world-renowned capabilities have helped to bring genomics and stemcell research into the mainstream of cancer research and treatment.”
The press release did not mention a new concept that popped up shortly after the conference: The living breathing biobank.
The living breathing biobank
In the talks about Understanding Life, the notion of the “The Hub” keeps returning. We want to see the creation of an open infrastructure consisting of the best brains, seamlessly connected and all with full and limitless access to relevant information of cancers, patient data and knowledge of quality of life for those who have to live with cancer.
The fellowship’s objective is to improve observations and the sharing of observations, to improve the networks of brains and resources bring discoveries to the patient, and ultimately to improve the quality of treatments dramatically. These three aspects represent the necessary parts of a new approach to discover new treatments and get the bad consequences of cancer under control.
At the conference in Cambridge and in a meeting with Hans Clevers in Utrecht shortly after the conference, we discovered that the root of our “Hub” is just around the corner in the Netherlands: The Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht. In the Utrecht in the Institute, on the spot, we invent a new kind of biobank: The Living Breathing Biobank. The living breathing biobank contains organoids: living structures that resemble life biomaterial in appearance or function, in particular of abnormal tumor masses. The Hubrecht Institute and its creative role was one of the surprises of the Cambridge conference. Hubrecht had succeeded in creating the essential set of tools and the required knowledge and know how, to improve the quality of observations and the sharing of high quality observations dramatically.
The living breathing biobank promises an infinite resource of (in our case) tumor tissue, which is alive and can be cloned indefinitely. It allows the creation of cell lines that will be needed to upstart a new approach to creating, maintaining and distributing tumor material for the benefit of the patient. Both for research purposes and for direct use as patients are treated for cancer.
Organoids against cancer
November 2011 will be remembered as the Month the Living Breathing Biobank was born. The conception of the organoid took place at an earlier date. The record of scientific publications in Journals like Nature and Science put this birth record in perspective. But in November 2011 we gave it its proper name.
Organoid Parc
Let us be clear at this point. Cancer is and remains a complex disease. We are not able to reason about the disease with the confidence a watchmaker reasons about watches. But we are beginning to understand how the disease develops and spreads through our bodies. We find ourselves in a new era of opportunities to understand way better than before what we can do about cancer to get the disease under control. This also amounts to knowing what the limits are of what we can and therefore must do.
We can do so much better once we start pooling our efforts, coordinate our work and put the best young and grown up brains together to intensify the transfer of discoveries and knowledge within and between networks of scientists, clinicians and anyone else able and willing to help getting cancer under control. The living breathing biobank is an organoid parc, and a high quality infinite resource of and for tumor tissue.
The Hub
Inevitably, when moving into new territories, the infrastructure of science should be capable of doing the job. The creation of the roots of a new infrastructure took place in Cambridge. And the Dutch hub, the Hubrecht Laboratory was the first root to sprout. Yes, it is wordplay, but it sounds right: the Hubrecht Institute becoming our first hub.
The next meeting of the fellows will be in Paris.