Developing microfluidic systems to culture patient-derived tumour organoids for personalized medicine

Personalized cancer therapy has immense potential to improve clinical outcomes of cancer patients because it tailors therapeutic treatment to each patient. To realize the promise of personalized medicine, there is an urgent need to develop new tumour models in the lab that can be easily tested, and also accurately represent responses of the original tumour. Patient-derived brain tumour organoids represent one such model that could potentially address this through the use of primary tissue obtained from the original tumour site. Developing these organoid models, however, has remained challenging because of the lack of laboratory tools that can maintain these organoids in an in vitro environment that closely resembles the tumour microenvironment found in vivo. The objective of this project is to conduct preliminary testing of three conceptual designs of microfluidic systems for culturing patient-derived tumour organoids, and to demonstrate feasibility of applying microfluidics technology as a novel approach to creating a suitable in vitro tumour microenvironment for studying tumour organoids.

Faculty Supervisor:

Edmond Young

Student:

Partner:

University of Leeds

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Education

University:

University of Toronto

Program: