Researchers in Canada and the US have created a personalised organ-on-a-chip that accurately predicts cancer patients’ response to chemotherapy, which could aid clinical decisions. 

Patients with advanced cancer who are eligible for surgery typically receive chemotherapy to decrease the size of the tumour. However, some patients do not respond to this type of treatment with clinicians unable to predict this response ahead of treatment. 

Researchers at EARA member Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, Canada, and Harvard University, US, created an organoid, miniature organ-like 3D cell culture, from biopsy sample cells taken from patients with oesophageal adenocarcinoma, a cancer with a high mortality rate. They transferred these organoids along with other cells from the same patient’s tumour environment into microfluidic chips — tiny devices with channels that allow the manipulation of fluids — creating a device that closely mimics each tumour. 

Then, the researchers circulated chemotherapy drugs in the concentration and exposure times that would be given to the patient through the organ chips. The drugs caused tumour cell death in four out of eight chips made from cancers from different patients, which matched precisely the response to chemotherapy of the same patients.  

“This innovation has the potential to directly improve patient outcomes by enabling clinicians to match each patient with the therapies best suited to them,” said Lorenzo Ferri, leader of the study published in the Journal of Translational Medicine.