Georgina Wherry, Dr Stefaan Verbruggen, Dr Lucia Cottone, Associate Professor Fiona Freeman, Professor Sandra Strauss

Queen Mary University, London

Fully funded PhD project (October 2025 - October 2029)Dr Lucia Cottone, Georgina Wherry & Dr Stefaan Verbruggen, 

BACKGROUND TO THE RESEARCH PROJECT

Survival of individuals with osteosarcoma, the most common primary bone cancer which mainly affects teenagers and young adults, has not improved in the last 40 years since chemotherapy was introduced. The response to this toxic treatment is poor in nearly half of the treated patients, contributing significantly to their tumour returning, but the reasons for this failure have not been fully explained. Research into osteosarcoma has been significantly challenging due to the rarity of this disease and to the lack of good experimental systems to understand the causes of chemoresistance. Moreover, traditional drug testing using cancer cells in a dish has a poor track record of identifying new treatments, because they are too dissimilar from the tumours.

With this project the team will generate an osteosarcoma ‘organ-on-a-chip’, a novel experimental setup that replicates the bone environment inside a bone tumour. The organ-on-a-chip will include osteosarcoma cells donated by patients and the elements of bone found in patients. They will then use the organ-on-a-chip to investigate what makes cancer cells resistant to chemotherapy. As a result, this project will provide a new tool to advance research and find better treatments for this paediatric cancer.