A microfluidics platform for combinatorial drug screening on cancer biopsies
Menée à l'aide de différentes lignées cellulaires de cancer du pancréas, de xénogreffes sur des modèles murins et de cellules issues de tumeurs solides humaines, cette étude analyse l'intérêt d'une plateforme pour évaluer rapidement, à partir d'une faible quantité de cellules tumorales mises en suspension, l'efficacité de nombreux traitements combinant plusieurs agents anticancéreux
Screening drugs on patient biopsies from solid tumours has immense potential, but is challenging due to the small amount of available material. To address this, we present here a plug-based microfluidics platform for functional screening of drug combinations. Integrated Braille valves allow changing the plug composition on demand and enable collecting >1200 data points (56 different conditions with at least 20 replicates each) per biopsy. After deriving and validating efficient and specific drug combinations for two genetically different pancreatic cancer cell lines and xenograft mouse models, we additionally screen live cells from human solid tumours with no need for ex vivo culturing steps, and obtain highly specific sensitivity profiles. The entire workflow can be completed within 48 h at assay costs of less than US$ 150 per patient. We believe this can pave the way for rapid determination of optimal personalized cancer therapies.
Nature Communications , article en libre accès, 2018