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The spatial biology hub, based in the UCL Institute for Liver and Digestive Health, will use pioneering technology to improve understanding of complex diseases such as neuroendocrine cancers and develop more effective therapies.
Neuroendocrine cancers are a group of cancers that develop in cells of the neuroendocrine system. They can develop in different parts of the body, such as the stomach, bowel, pancreas or lungs.
The hub has been made possible thanks to:
• a grant from the Medical Research Council (UKRI), awarded to leading scientist Dr Pilar Acedo Núñez (UCL Institute for Liver and Digestive Health). This funding has enabled the purchase of two cutting-edge platforms - a digital spatial profiler and a spatial molecular imager - designed to analyse tissues at an unprecedented level of detail. These advanced tools will help researchers identify new treatment strategies and bring hope to patients facing difficult diagnoses of neuroendocrine cancers.
• funding from the Miranda Filmer Fund for a PhD researcher and a laboratory technician - as well as laboratory equipment – who are helping to examine in more detail than ever before how cancer cells behave and interact with other cells.
Miranda Filmer (pictured below), from Wiltshire, died in 2022 of neuroendocrine cancer, aged 30. Miranda’s family set up a fund for research into neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) and have been actively fundraising since.
The Miranda Filmer Fund has raised £573,360 to date, with a target of £1million, in support of groundbreaking research exploring why some cancer cells are more aggressive, why they change their structure and how they respond to treatment. The aim is to increase understanding of which treatments work better on which patients.
The neuroendocrine cancer study is led by the Royal Free London’s Professor Martyn Caplin, a global expert on NETs, and Professor Krista Rombouts, an internationally-renowned scientist and interim head of department at UCL’s Institute for Liver and Digestive Health.
Prof Rombouts said: “These technologies provide unparalleled opportunities to create detailed 3D maps of molecules within tissue samples.
“We will, for the first time, be able to map genes or proteins in their native location in the tissue and investigate how they interact with different cell types.
“This will help us understand more about the behaviour of the genes responsible for the development of neuroendocrine cancer and to decipher in great detail how tumours react to different medication, helping clinicians to personalise treatment and therapy plans for their patients.”
On the day Miranda would have celebrated her 33rd birthday, the Filmer family and the scientists leading the global search for better treatments gathered to name the research hub in her honour.
Prof Caplin said: “Miranda had a very aggressive form of neuroendocrine cancer, which is a rare cancer. She was a courageous and determined lady who lived life to the full, including competing in horse trials, until the very end of her too-short life. This is a wonderful tribute to her, as she was always looking to the now and the future. This laboratory will help not only neuroendocrine cancer patients but also patients with more common cancers.”
Main picture: Miranda's parents Charles and Antonia Filmer pictured at the lab naming event with Professor Martyn Caplin (left) and Dr Daniel Krell (right), who treated Miranda for neuroendocrine cancer.
