Modelling Cancer Metastasis on a Chip for Therapeutic Discovery

转移是癌症患者死亡的主要原因，而且很难治疗。转移涉及癌细胞与其微环境之间复杂的生物和物理相互作用。我们对导致转移的事件的理解受到目前可用的体外模型（例如缺乏肿瘤异质性和微环境相互作用）和体内模型（小鼠和人类之间的遗传差异，低通量）之间的显着差距的限制。这些共同阻碍了针对转移步骤的药物的开发。本博士项目拟开发一种新型的生物工程微流体培养系统，将模拟癌症异质性与微环境复杂性相结合。这将增加我们对转移级联关键步骤的理解，并为药物开发提供具有更大预测能力的临床前分析系统原型。

Metastasis is the leading cause of death in cancer patients, and is difficult to treat. Metastasis involves complex biological and physical interactions between cancer cells and their microenvironment. Our understanding of events leading to metastasis is limited by the significant gap between currently available in vitro models (e.g. lack of tumour heterogeneity and microenvironmental interactions) and in vivo models (genetic differences between mice and humans, low throughput). This together hampers the development of drugs to target steps of metastasis. This PhD project proposes to develop a novel bioengineered microfluidic culture system, which combines simulated cancer heterogeneity with microenvironmental complexity. This will increase our understanding of critical steps of the metastatic cascade, and provide a prototype preclinical assay system with greater predictive power for drug development.