Microfluidic Arrays of Breast Tumor Spheroids for Drug Screening and Personalized Cancer Therapies

One of the obstacles limiting progress in the development of effective cancer therapies is the shortage of preclinical models that capture the dynamic nature of tumor microenvironments. Interstitial flow strongly impacts tumor response to chemotherapy; however, conventional in vitro cancer models largely disregard this key feature. Here, a proof of principle microfluidic platform for the generation of large arrays of breast tumor spheroids that are grown under close-to-physiological flow in a biomimetic hydrogel is reported. This cancer spheroids-on-a-chip model is used for time- and labor-efficient studies of the effects of drug dose and supply rate on the chemosensitivity of breast tumor spheroids. The capability to grow large arrays of tumor spheroids from patient-derived cells of different breast cancer subtypes is shown, and the correlation between in vivo drug efficacy and on-chip spheroid drug response is demonstrated. The proposed platform can serve as an in vitro preclinical model for the development of personalized cancer therapies and effective screening of new anticancer drugs.

Automated summary

The study introduces a novel microfluidic platform for efficient studies on the effect of drug dose and supply rate on chemosensitivity of breast tumor spheroids, and demonstrates the capability to grow large arrays of tumor spheroids from patient-derived cells of different breast cancer subtypes.