KAIST "Simultaneous Evaluation of Anticancer Drug Efficacy Under Various Conditions Becomes Possible"

A screening technology that simultaneously evaluates the efficacy of anticancer drugs under various conditions using bioprinting technology has been developed in Korea. The core of the newly developed technology is to simulate 36 types of tumor microenvironments inside fluidic channels and simultaneously evaluate the efficacy of anticancer drugs under 12 experimental conditions.

When anticancer drugs are administered to the human body, drug molecules are transported along the bloodstream. These drug molecules permeate and diffuse through the blood vessel walls. The diffused molecules gradually penetrate into the tumor mass, exhibiting drug efficacy.

On the 16th, KAIST announced that Professor Je-Gyun Park’s research team from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering succeeded in developing a lab-on-a-chip that implements a complex tumor microenvironment and performs drug screening reflecting multiple analytical variables.

Professor Jae-Kyun Park, Dr. Ki-Hyun Lee. Provided by KAIST

The lab-on-a-chip developed by the research team is significant in that it overcomes the limitations of existing bioprinting and lab-on-a-chip technologies and maximizes their advantages.

Bioprinting is a 3D printing technology that fabricates functional structures similar to biological tissues and organs using bio-ink composed of cells and biomaterials, enabling the reproduction of complex shapes and compositions of tissues or organs in an external environment. However, conventional bioprinting has shown limitations in controlling and analyzing the culture environment of fabricated biological models.

Lab-on-a-chip is a microfluidic device and system designed to perform various sample analysis functions such as preprocessing, separation, dilution, mixing, reaction, and detection all at once within channels composed of microfluidic circuits. Until now, there have been limitations in simulating biological environments inside the tiny fluidic channels.

The research team focused on overcoming these limitations while maximizing each technology’s advantages. They also succeeded in composing 36 tumor models with different compositions inside the lab-on-a-chip using bioprinting technology and simultaneously evaluating the efficacy of anticancer drugs under 12 experimental conditions within the same device.

Schematic of bio-printing lab-on-a-chip integrated technology and anticancer drug efficacy evaluation technology. Provided by KAIST

First, the research team utilized the excellent spatial freedom of bioprinting and its ability to use various biomaterials to integrate 36 tumor models composed of three different compositions into a single microfluidic device.

Next, by culturing cells under flow conditions to mimic key structures for material transport such as blood vessel walls and tumor masses, they introduced anticancer drugs at four different concentrations into the tumor models, performing drug evaluation under 12 experimental conditions within one device.

During this process, the research team observed that the transport capacity of drug molecules decreased due to the influence of the blood vessel walls and that the molecules penetrated into the interior of the tumor mass. Above all, they confirmed that there was a significant difference in drug efficacy compared to existing tumor models that could not simulate the in vivo transport process.

This study is meaningful in that it produced in vitro tumor models considering various variables such as model complexity, number of models, and throughput using integrated bioprinting-lab-on-a-chip technology, and performed reliable drug evaluation.

Professor Je-Gyun Park said, “We developed a reliable drug evaluation model through a microfluidic cell culture and analysis platform fabricated by integrating bioprinting and lab-on-a-chip technologies,” adding, “In the future, this technology can be utilized as a next-generation in vitro cell culture and analysis technology that efficiently mimics the characteristics of various tissues and organs and performs biological analysis and drug efficacy evaluation.”

Meanwhile, the research results, with Dr. Ki-Hyun Lee from KAIST’s Department of Bio and Brain Engineering as the first author, were published online on June 3 in the international journal Advanced Healthcare Materials. The research was supported by the Basic Research Program (Mid-career Researcher Program) of the National Research Foundation of Korea.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.