A Hypoxia Incubator Chamber has been installed and is now fully operational at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital’s Dubrowsky Regenerative Medicine Laboratory, providing controlled hypoxic (poor in oxygen) conditions for cell cultures.

In all types of cancer, including bone cancers, the tumour environment is usually hypoxic. This happens because the mutated cancer cells grow so fast or uninterruptedly that the blood vessels can't keep up very well. This leads to a very poor vasculature (the arrangement of blood vessels) within the tumour, consequently less oxygen makes it to the cells. It has been proven that cancer cells have a mutation that allows them to live and even thrive under these conditions.

Lucas Souza, Lab Manager, explains: “There is still much we don’t know about cancer, but being able to create the same conditions that cancer cells are in will help in answering some of our questions. Now that we have a chamber that can mimic the hypoxic environment of a tumour we are able to utilise this in various experiments.

“For example, in one project we are exploring whether the metal element gallium could be used as a possible treatment option in metastatic bone cancer patients. These tissues contain a mixture of cells that include cancerous cells alongside healthy bone cells and blood cells. We need to be able to isolate the cancerous cells from healthy cells so we can study the effects of gallium on them. Doing so in the hypoxic environment they exist in means we can have a better understanding of how the treatment would work in the body.”

The hypoxic chamber will be available for use in other areas of research where cell cultures need to be placed in these controlled conditions. For more information about the Dubrowsky Regenerative Medicine Laboratory please visit Royal Orthopaedic Hospital - Research facilities (roh.nhs.uk), and for those interested in using the lab and the new hypoxia chamber, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..