Microfluidic and Organotypic Tumor Slice Culture Drug Testing Platform for Individualized Cancer Therapy

Application

A drug combination screening/testing platform for individualized cancer therapy.

Key Benefits

Rapid screening of effective drug combination.
Integrated tumor microenvironment.
Identifying personalized therapy for individual cancer patient.

Market Summary

Traditional two-dimensional (2D) in vitro culture models for drug development do not fully encompass all the features of human tissues, as they do not adequately simulate living tissue and their microenvironments. Although animal models can serve as translational methods to humans, they are expensive and can take months or years to obtain results. This has driven researchers to generate three-dimensional (3D) cell and tissue models of cancer that more accurately mimic the growth and migration of these cells in the body. However, while the 3D tissue technologies have enormous promise, they are still early and do not accurately simulate tissues within the body. The invention described herein is a microfluidic device integrates the culture of living brain tumors that provides rapid and reliable prediction, in real-time, of the evaluation of new drugs or combinations for the treatment of cancers like pediatric brain tumors.

Technical Summary

Current in vitro drug combination screening is ineffective because of its inability to replicate the brain tumor microenvironment. The microfluidic device developed by researchers at Emory integrates the culture of living tumor slices as to provide rapid and reliable real-time prediction of the best possible drug combinations for juvenile brain tumors. This device contains living brain tumor slices which provide an intact microenvironment. Furthermore, the device consists of a high-precision chemical gradient generator which enables reliable testing of selected drug combinations.