Using Microfluidics to Investigate Tumor Cell Extravasation and T-cell Immunotherapies

Understanding the mechanism of tumor cell extravasation, cell migration and the role of the immunosystem is crucial in creating targeted and patient-specific cancer therapies. We created an in-vitro microfluidic cell extravasation assay, incorporating a microvascular network and demonstrated its use to study cancer cells extravasation. Separately, we developed an assay for screening T-cell migration and cytotoxicity as a means to evaluate the efficiency of adoptive immunotherapies against cancer. Similar devices using a similar platform can be used to recreate a tumor liver microenvironment, taking in consideration the hypoxic and inflammatory conditions in the liver. These platforms show considerable potential as efficient pre-clinical models for testing the efficiency of cancer drugs and engineered T-cell functionality for personalized medicine.