For the first time experts are testing up to 500 different drugs simultaneously on cancer cells extracted from a single human tumour – using a high-tech robot.
This world first is being carried out at Queen Alexandra Hospital, Cosham, where this time last year it was possible only to check 10 drugs at once.
The development of a new drug costs more than £500 million and takes an average of 10 years.
But this research means scientists will be able to develop new treatments faster and at less cost by weeding out drugs that are ineffective more quickly.
The tests are carried out on cancerous human tissue left over from biopsies after diagnosis. It takes just two hours to drop minute samples of up to 500 drugs into tiny trays containing some of the surplus cells.
The samples are incubated for six days before scientists check to see whether any drug combinations have killed off all the tumour cells tested.
The results are then used to work out the most effective drug treatment combination.
Professor Ian Cree, Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust consultant pathologist and Translational Oncology Research Centre director, said: 'Ultimately, this will give cancer patients new hope. We have demonstrated in the past that we help the development of new drugs. It is an exciting time to be in cancer research.
'It's a big advance. The robot is mainly used to assess new drugs. It means we have got the capability of developing more drugs with real human cells. We can carry out more tests on a single sample than ever before.
'We could not have done this work before. The robot's level of accuracy is immense.
'To pipette each sample by hand would have been virtually impossible.
'There are something like 1,100 drugs going through clinical trials at any one time. At the moment less than 10 per cent of drugs that enter clinical testing and are tried in a patient at some point are licensed and make it through to the clinic.
'The development of a new drug costs more than $1bn and takes an average of 10 years.
'We are trying to speed up that process by testing drugs early against human cancer cells so that we know which are the right drugs to develop further.'