A microfluidic cell culture platform for personalizing pancreatic cancer therapies

胰腺癌有望成为美国癌症死亡的第二大原因 2030年。由于这种癌症在早期没有症状，所以患者在晚期被诊断出来。 5年存活率不到5%。“一刀切”治疗PAN的好处-- 胰腺癌已经进入平台期，部分原因是化疗耐药的高发生率和 与这种疾病相关的异质性。需要新的工具来解决这些问题并改进 受这种致命癌症折磨的病人的存活率。 大约40%的新诊断患者患有转移性胰腺癌。典型的生存时间 这类患者的年龄在8到10个月之间；因此，启动最有效的 尽快进行治疗。所有转移性胰腺癌患者都接受化疗方案。 患者参加FOLFIRINOX或吉西他滨/NAB-紫杉醇方案。目前， 使用哪种化疗方案的决定是由普遍的共识指南决定的，而不是由治疗方案决定的。 患者个体的更多特征。治疗反应通常通过放射治疗来评估。 成像每两个月进行一次，只有30%的患者对所选的化疗方案有反应。 因此，我们损失了宝贵的时间。这种反复尝试的方法来选择治疗侵袭性 癌症是不可接受的。我们的团队建议通过以下方式加快和个性化治疗选择过程 用于癌细胞培养和患者药物反应评价的微流控平台的研制 患有转移性胰腺癌。我们的长期目标是建立微流控癌症细胞的临床应用。 个人化化疗的技术。在成功完成目前的项目后，微流控 培养平台将被纳入未来的临床验证研究。

Pancreatic cancer is expected to become the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States by 2030. Because this cancer is asymptomatic at the early stage, patients are diagnosed at the advanced stage and have a 5 year survival rate of less than 5%. The benefit from `one-size-fits-all' approach to treating pan- creatic cancer has reached a plateau, partly due to high incidence of chemotherapy resistance and heterogeneity associated with this disease. Novel tools are needed to address these problems and to improve the survival of patients afflicted by this deadly cancer. About 40% of newly diagnosed patients have a metastatic form of pancreatic cancer. Typical survival time for such patients is between 8 and 10 months; therefore, it is extremely important to initiate the most efficacious therapy as soon as possible. All patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer receive a chemotherapy regimen. A patient is enrolled into either a FOLFIRINOX or gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel regimen. At the present time, the decision of which chemotherapy regimen to use is driven by general consensus guidelines and not by the tu- mor characteristics of an individual patient. Treatment response is typically evaluated by radiographical imaging performed every two months, and only 30% of patients respond to the chosen chemotherapy regimen. Precious time is lost as a result. Such trial-and-error approach to therapy selection for treating an aggressive cancer is simply unacceptable. Our team proposes to accelerate and personalize therapy selection process by developing a microfluidic platform for cultivating cancer cells and evaluating drug responsiveness for patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer. Our long term goal is to establish clinical utility of microfluidic cancer cul- tures for personalizing chemotherapy. Upon successful completion of the current project, the microfluidic culture platform will be incorporated into future clinical validation studies.