This interdisciplinary consortium of academic scientists and clinicians, representing all health regions grew out of the Norwegian Cancer Genomics Consortium. With the support from the Cancer Society, Helse Sør-Øst, The Research Council of Norway, and private funds, NoSarC is accruing an internationally unique biobank. It contains material from several annual population-based cohorts of Norwegian sarcoma patients. The value of our biobank has already been proven through international collaborations.
The NoSarC project has several objectives:
- Collection of a population-based biobank of tumor, blood, plasma and serum samples from sarcoma patients in all health regions of Norway, resulting in approximately 600 samples so far
- Next generation sequencing (NGS) analysis of all genes to identify possibly targetable mutated driver mechanisms and possible genetic predisposing factors
- Establishing in vivo and in vitro models from the most aggressive tumors
- Preclinical investigations to determine efficacy of available drugs in sarcoma cells in vitro, based on targets found by NGS analysis
- Medium-throughput drug screens to identify drugs with in vitro efficacy against sarcoma cells
- In vivo validation of promising drugs in sarcoma xenograft models
- Initiation of small-scale national and international clinical trials to evaluate the efficacy of new drugs in sarcoma patients