A Microfluidic Device to Simulate the Impact of Gut Microbiome in Cancer

Abstract

The gut microbiome has a role in the growth of many diseases such as cancer due to increased inflammation. There is an unmet need to identify novel strategies to investigate the effect of inflammation mediated by gut microbiome on cancer cells. However, there are limited biomimetic co-culture systems that allow to test causal relationship of microbiome on cancer cells. Here we developed a microfluidic chip that can simulate the interaction of the gut microbiome and cancer cells to test the effects of bacteria and inflammatory stress on cancer cells in vitro. To quantify the effect of bacteria on the growth of colorectal cancer cells, we cultured colorectal cancer cell line with Bacillus or lipopolysaccharide (LPS), which is a purified bacterial membrane and induce major inflammatory response, in the PDMS microfluidic device. We found that both LPS and Bacillus significantly accelerate the growth of colorectal cancer cells. These results show that the increased presence of certain bacteria can promote cancer cell growth and that these microfluidic chips can be used to test the specific correlation between bacteria and cancer cell growth. These microfluidic devices can have future implications for various cancer types and to identify treatment strategies.