Organ-on-a-Chip Platforms for Drug Screening and Delivery in Tumor Cells: A Systematic Review

Abstract

The development of cancer models that rectify the simplicity of monolayer or static cell cultures physiologic microenvironment and, at the same time, replicate the human system more accurately than animal models has been a challenge in biomedical research. Organ-on-a-chip (OoC) devices are a solution that has been explored over the last decade. The combination of microfluidics and cell culture allows the design of a dynamic microenvironment suitable for the evaluation of treatments’ efficacy and effects, closer to the response observed in patients. This systematic review sums the studies from the last decade, where OoC with cancer cell cultures were used for drug screening assays. The studies were selected from three databases and analyzed following the research guidelines for systematic reviews proposed by PRISMA. In the selected studies, several types of cancer cells were evaluated, and the majority of treatments tested were standard chemotherapeutic drugs. Some studies reported higher drug resistance of the cultures on the OoC devices than on 2D cultures, which indicates the better resemblance to in vivo conditions of the former. Several studies also included the replication of the microvasculature or the combination of different cell cultures. The presence of vasculature can influence positively or negatively the drug efficacy since it contributes to a greater diffusion of the drug and also oxygen and nutrients. Co-cultures with liver cells contributed to the evaluation of the systemic toxicity of some drugs metabolites. Nevertheless, few studies used patient cells for the drug screening assays.

Diagnosis Methods for COVID-19: A Systematic Review

“…Before the manufacturing process, these devices can be previously analyzed and developed using numerical simulations [95] to improve the performance of the sensor. The well-known advantages of the microfluidic systems, including the need for small volumes of samples, portability, and fast detection, are gaining increasing popularity as a tool to help to improve the detection and diagnosis of several diseases, such as malaria and diabetes [96][97][98][99][100] and also to evaluate the potential of novel therapies [101][102][103][104]. Additional microfluidic devices have been used commercially to detect and diagnose COVID-19.…”

Establishing a simple perfusion cell culture system for light-activated liposomes

“…These biomimicking cell culture platforms aim to provide more in vivo-like environment compared to traditional in vitro methods. Furthermore, the anticancer drug resistance increases in “organ-on-a-chip” cell culture models when compared to traditional well plate assays 2 . This replicates the clinical findings of anticancer treatments more appropriately than what we can see on the normal well plate assays.…”

“…Increasing the attachment time from 24 to 48 h markedly increased the cell viability (Figs. 2,3,4). For the flow rate of 250 µl/min, the relative viability increased from 0.33 ± 0.18 to 1.22 ± 0.11 (mean ± s.d., p = 0.002).…”

“…As a particular targeting ligand, in the current study we are interested in hyaluronic acid (HA, also referred to as hyaluronan), which can OPEN 1 Division of Pharmaceutical Biosciences, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Helsinki, 00790 Helsinki, Finland. 2 Department of Formulation Sciences and Technology, Tokyo University of Pharmacy and Life Sciences, Tokyo 192-0392, Japan. 3 Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Tampere University, 33720 Tampere, Finland.…”

Recent Advances of Organ-on-a-Chip in Cancer Modeling Research

“…Such platforms aim to resemble their native functionalities to improve the screening of anti-cancer drugs and elucidate the mechanism of cancer biology [ 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 ]. OoC technology employs a microfluidic chip as the core, combining biology, materials science, and engineering to simulate the microenvironment of native tissue and organs, containing living cells, biological fluids, mechanical stimulation, and other elements in vitro [ 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 ]. Generally, OoC devices are fabricated by “soft lithography”, which duplicates the patterns of a silicon template by pouring the liquid polymer into the template to create cell array platforms [ 34 , 35 , 43 ].…”