To guide cancer therapy, device quickly tests drugs on tumor tissue

Wednesday, December 12, 2018 - 00:30 in Health & Medicine

MIT researchers have 3-D printed a novel microfluidic device that simulates cancer treatments on biopsied tumor tissue, so clinicians can better examine how individual patients will respond to different therapeutics — before administering a single dose. Testing cancer treatments today relies mostly on trial and error; patients may undergo multiple time-consuming and hard-to-tolerate therapies in pursuit of one that works. Recent innovations in pharmaceutical development involve growing artificial tumors to test drugs on specific cancer types. But these models take weeks to grow and don’t account for an individual patient’s biological makeup, which can affect treatment efficacy. The researchers’ device, which can be printed in about one hour, is a chip slightly larger than a quarter, with three cylindrical “chimneys” rising from the surface. These are ports used to input and drain fluids, as well as remove unwanted air bubbles. Biopsied tumor fragments are placed in a chamber connected to a network of...

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