A team of German scientists and biotech company Dynamic42 have jointly developed a ‘tumour-on-chip’ model of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), allowing insights into interactions between tumour cells and potential treatments.
The team of scientists, led by Professor Nicole Teusch at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Biology and Biotechnology at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, used biochips manufactured by Dynamic42 to create an in vitro model to study the efficacy of drugs in treating the cancer.
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“The collaboration with Dynamic42 has given us the opportunity to develop a state-of-the-art system that can significantly advance pancreatic cancer research. We are confident that this model will make a significant contribution to the development of new therapies,” said Teusch.
Also based in Germany, Dynamic42 spun off from the University Hospital Jena in 2018. The biotech’s main offerings are its human organ-on-chip models and micro-physiological systems. Organ-on-chips have become an established method of studying disease pathogenesis, whilst tumour-on-chips, although promising, need more refinement before being a go-to preclinical model for cancer research.
Professor Teusch and Dynamic42 set out their work in one of the most challenging cancers, with PDAC being the most common and lethal form of pancreatic cancer. A major cause of its fast disease progression is the presence of a highly fibrotic tumour microenvironment. The complex tumour microenvironment is also a reason why developing effective treatments against the disease is difficult.
Results from the study, which were published in the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Lab on a Chip journal, demonstrate that the innovative chip could improve prospects at the preclinical stage of drug testing.
Teusch and her team successfully developed the in vitro model that realistically simulates the tumour microenvironment seen in PDAC. The chip was integrated with PDAC spheroids, structures made of PANC-1 cells – a human pancreatic cancer cell line – and pancreatic stellate cells. This gives the model three-dimensional cell cultures, simulating tumour structure more accurately than two-dimensional counterparts.
A key benefit of the tumour-on-chip developed by the team is that it allows dynamic administration of drugs or immune cells. The researchers tested the chip’s ability for drug testing by applying US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved cancer therapy Zolinza (vorinostat), which is developed by MSD. After administrating the treatment for three days, PDAC spheroids were killed off without affecting vascular integrity.
“This advanced PDAC model offers a powerful platform for identifying promising new drug candidates, thereby reducing the reliance on animal models and improving translational potential for clinical applications,” the authors said in the paper.
Dynamic42 CEO and co-founder Dr Martin Raasch said: “This innovative model marks a turning point in preclinical cancer research. It enables us to precisely analyse the complex processes in the tumour microenvironment and accelerate new therapeutic approaches.”
