Ex Vivo
Compound Screening
Enabling personalized treatment decisions based on functional ex vivo compound screening.
Compound Screening Platform
High troughput screening for precision medicine approaches
CBmed’s compound screening platform is a highly versatile screening system that seamlessly integrates both high-content and high-throughput capabilities. The core robotic system enables the fast and standardized handling of 384 well cell culture plates. The platform offers a highly precise compound transfer via an acoustic system (Labcyte Echo 650), an automated bulk dispensing and plate washing system, a cell incubator and plate reader capable of measuring fluorescence, absorbance, and luminescence. Additionally, it houses a Revity Operetta high-content automated confocal microscope for more advanced analyses. Comprehensive software provides maximum flexibility in assay development, and a Luminex FlexMap 3D reader is available for gene expression-based screening.
The entire system is safely housed in a HEPA-filtered environment, ensuring a sterile and controlled environment for the experiments. This high level of automation not only improves precision and reproducibility, but also enables high-throughput screening. By reducing manual tasks, the platform supports efficient and effective screening on a large scale, accelerating drug discovery and development.
Patient Derived Tumour Cells (PDCs)
Using patient derived tumor cells for personalized treatment recommendations
Our compound screening approach utilizing short-term cultured patient derived tumour cells (PDCs) for ex vivo compound screening. Since short-term cultured PDC’s (2D and 3D culture) preserve many aspects of a tumour’s characteristics and heterogeneity, they represent a highly promising and complimentary method to inform personalized treatment. In our established workflow PDCs are obtained from freshly resected tumour tissue and cultivated for 1-2 weeks prior to drug screening. In contrast to animal model-based applications, complete timely analysis within 3-4 weeks is possible making clinical applicability feasible. The system which we employ has been successfully for the highly standardized testing of up multiple compounds across different concentrations and has been established with highest quality control standards in our central laboratory (CBmed, Graz)sing patient derived tumor cells for personalized treatment recommendations
We provide testing of your drug candidates on patient-derived cells from diverse tumor entities, aiming to reduce the risk of failure in your upcoming clinical trials and thereby de-risk your drug development process.
Service Portfolio
| Service Category | Service | Service Description | Typical Application | Maturity Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Functional Precision Oncology | Patient-derived 3D cancer models | Access to clinically relevant patient-derived cancer cells cultured as 3D spheroids | Translational drug testing, patient stratification, tumour heterogeneity studies | L2 – L3 |
| Ex vivo compound screening | High-throughput drug screening in patient-derived spheroids to generate functional response data. | Functional precision oncology, compound prioritisation, translational efficacy testing | L2 – L3 | |
| Functional response profiling | Systematic drug response assessment of inter- and intra-tumour variability across molecularly defined patient-derived cohorts. | Identification of sensitive and resistant patient subgroups and profiling heterogeneity | L2 – L3 | |
| Benchmarking of targeted therapies | Comparative evaluation of investigational agents against clinically relevant therapies. | Therapeutic positioning, competitive benchmarking, translational validation | L2 – L3 | |
| Rational combination screening | Systematic testing of targeted drug combinations to identify synergistic interactions and resistance-overcoming strategies. | Combination therapy development, resistance prevention, Mechanism of action (MoA)-guided screening | L1 | |
| Translational clinical integration | Integration of patient-derived models with real-world clinical data through CBmed’s hospital-linked infrastructure. | Clinical hypothesis generation, ex vivo–clinical correlation, patient selection strategies | in place | |
| Integrated translational precision oncology workflow | Combined use of patient-derived 3D models, automation-driven screening, imaging-based profiling, molecular datasets and clinical annotations to deliver actionable translational insights. | End-to-end translational drug development support, companion biomarker development, precision oncology studies | L3 | |
| Mechanistic Pharmacology | High-content imaging-based phenotypic profiling | Quantitative spheroid-level imaging to capture early and subtle morphological response signatures beyond conventional viability endpoints. | Mechanistic phenotyping, early response detection, morphology-based drug profiling | L1 |
| Multiparametric functional readouts | Analysis of functional treatment effects including apoptosis, necrosis, morphology, and spheroid remodelling. | Drug mechanism-of-action characterisation, efficacy profiling, toxicity-associated phenotypes | L1 | |
| Biomarker Discovery | Clinically annotated biospecimen cohorts | Integration of patient-derived models with molecular and clinical annotations, including matched NGS and clinical data. | Biomarker-driven patient stratification, correlation of molecular features with functional drug response | available |
| Multi-Omics Biomarker Discovery | Integration of genomic, multi-omics and phenotypic response data to define predictive response patterns. | Biomarker discovery, response prediction, molecular stratification | L1 | |
| Ex vivo response–outcome correlation | Linking drug sensitivity profiles to clinical parameters such as treatment history, response, and progression. | Translational biomarker validation, therapy-response correlation | L1 |
Exploratory
(RUO)
Feasibility
Discovery
Hypothesis
Fit-for-
purpose
Define use
Decision support
Internally
Validated
SOP
QC strategy
reproducibility
Clinically
Aligned
Trial-ready
audit-support
Integrating results from our ex vivo compound screening platform that utilizes patient-derived tumor cells into clinical decision-making will facilitate the development of highly effective, tailor-made therapies. This approach minimizes adverse effects and advances the application of precision medicine for personalized cancer treatment.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ex Vivo Compound Screening assesses how patient derived tumor cells respond to therapeutic compounds outside the body. This approach provides highly individualized response profiles, helping identify treatments with the greatest potential effectiveness for a given patient.
CBmed integrates high throughput automation – including robotic handling, acoustic liquid transfer, and automated microscopy – to test large numbers of compounds and concentrations with precision and reproducibility. This setup enables rapid, reliable functional profiling that supports personalized treatment strategies.
PDCs are isolated directly from patient tumors and maintained short term as spheroids. Because they retain key molecular and phenotypic features of the original tumor, they provide clinically meaningful insights that surpass those generated using conventional cell lines.
Tumor tissue is dissociated and cultured as PDCs, followed by exposure to a library of compounds at multiple concentrations. High content and high throughput imaging and viability assays then quantify treatment responses. The resulting data help identify compounds with the highest therapeutic potential for the patient.
By directly measuring how an individual’s tumor cells respond to therapy, ex vivo screening supports therapy selection based on real biological evidence rather than generalized assumptions. This can reduce ineffective treatments, minimize side effects, and guide more confident clinical decisions.
Automation improves consistency, minimizes manual handling errors, and enables large scale, complex assay designs. It ensures reproducible data, supports high throughput workflows, and maintains controlled conditions critical for generating reliable and clinically relevant results.
Patient‑derived cells (PDCs) are cells obtained directly from a patient’s tumor or tissue sample and cultured in the laboratory. Because they retain many of the biological characteristics of the original tumor — including its genetic profile, behavior, and treatment responses — PDCs provide a highly relevant model for studying diseases and in-vitro responses to therapies.