Tumor chemo-sensitivity assays (TCA) involve the in vitro exposure of cultured cancerous cells to different drugs at varying concentrations. These analyses are traditionally used to determine drug susceptibilities, of cancerous cells in vitro, and can help discern whether a certain drug regimen will work against a tumor of a certain individual. This paradigm of personalized medicine has been explored in breast cancer, where a correlation has been shown between TCA guided therapy and clinical outcome. Microfluidic platforms can provide clinicians the ability to perform such assays with minimal amount of patient sample and also assay a variety of different therapeutic regimens. However, current microfluidic assay platforms are limited by the lack of the ability to independently lyse or collect cells exposed to different conditions and either the absence of on- chip sample pre-concentration or the use of abrasive cell traps. In this project, we propose a Microfluidic Chemo-sensitivity Assay Platform (µCAP) with non-abrasive on-chip cell pre- concentration and individually addressable assay regions. The designed chip has more than 120 cell trap and analysis areas, can expose cells to two different drugs or drug combinations (with 8 different dilutions) with 8 replicates for each drug condition. The device will be adapted to fit a 96 well plate so that it can be streamline into existing process flow. The flow will be driven by pneumatic and gravitational forces and both cell viability and apoptosis analysis will be done. µCAP will enable high throughput drug sensitivity assays on patient tumor samples and help in the determination of personalized treatment regimens and therapy.
Project end date: 08/16/13