Abstract

Towards Functional Precision Medicine: Microfluidic Platform For Combinatorial Drug Screening Using Stereolithography

viraj mehta, PhD graduate student, IIT Hyderabad

3D printed resin based microfluidic fabrication has been gaining popularity for the past 10 years. Although there are several reports utilizing resin based techniques for micro fluidic tumor culture and drug screening, multi-drug-based 3D printed tumor models are still lacking. In this study, we report a novel microfluidic device for 3D culture of breast and oral tumor spheroids. Our device is capable of forming highly circular spheroids on flat bottom 3D printed microwells. Besides, the device can test various combinations of three anti-cancer drugs simultaneously. As the combination of drugs can reduce drug concentrations and are more effective than single drug therapies, we believe discovering potential drug combinations on patient-derived samples will aid in mitigating the side effects of chemotherapy. The tumor spheroids maintain excellent viability in the device for 120 h. We observe differential drug sensitivities among tested patient samples matching their diagnosis. In addition, we show that tumor spheroids can be taken out from the developed device for downstream analysis such as flow cytometry.