Researchers are developing a way of predicting the best treatment for patients afflicted with Australia's second-biggest cancer killer.
They've used tumour samples from advanced bowel cancer patients to grow 3D models in a lab that can test different types of therapies.
"Basically, there's hundreds of these little organoids growing and we can try different drugs, we can try different drugs at different doses," medical oncologist and WEHI researcher, Professor Peter Gibbs, said.
The organoids are the size of grain of sand and a special robot is used to screen which treatment kills off the tumour more effectively.
It helps take the guesswork out of treating advanced bowel cancer which can be difficult to beat.
"Each time you give a patient an ineffective treatment, you lose two to three months on something that won't work," Gibbs said.
A world-first study, published in Cell Reports Medicine, showed that the technology can identify the most effective treatment for individual patients and importantly, it can pinpoint which therapies are futile with 90 per cent accuracy.
A clinical trial will get underway at several hospitals in Melbourne in the coming months to see how the pre-testing information can help doctors and patients in the clinic.
Meri Dimovska, 44, said the technology will be a huge relief for cancer patients who experience a lot of anxiety, not knowing if their treatment which usually comes with side-effects will shrink the cancer.
She was diagnosed with stage 2 bowel cancer after experiencing stomach cramps and then discovering blood in her stool.
But surgery on her tumour revealed her cancer had spread to her body cavity and it was classified as stage 4.
Thankfully, her first chemotherapy is doing its job but other patients she has met haven't been so fortunate.
"Some have taken years to get a treatment actually working for them so I'm kind of blessed in my own journey," she said.
