Vascularized Tumor Spheroid-on-a-Chip Model Verifies Synergistic Vasoprotective and Chemotherapeutic Effects

• Published in: ACS biomaterials science & engineering 2022-03, Vol.8 (3), p.1215-1225
• Main Authors: Hu, Zhiwei, Cao, Yuanxiong, Galan, Edgar A, Hao, Liang, Zhao, Haoran, Tang, Jiyuan, Sang, Gan, Wang, Hanqi, Xu, Bing, Ma, Shaohua
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animals; Antineoplastic Agents - pharmacology; Antineoplastic Agents - therapeutic use; Lab-On-A-Chip Devices; Mice; Neoplasms; Spheroids, Cellular; Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine; Tumor Microenvironment
• ISSN: 2373-9878; 2373-9878
• DOI: 10.1021/acsbiomaterials.1c01099

Prolyl hydroxylases (PHD) inhibitors have been observed to improve drug distribution in mice tumors via blood vessel normalization, increasing the effectiveness of chemotherapy. These effects are yet to be demonstrated in human cell models. Tumor spheroids are three-dimensional cell clusters that have demonstrated great potential in drug evaluation for personalized medicine. Here, we used a perfusable vascularized tumor spheroid-on-a-chip to simulate the tumor microenvironment in vivo and demonstrated that the PHD inhibitor dimethylallyl glycine prevents the degradation of normal blood vessels while enhancing the efficacy of the anticancer drugs paclitaxel and cisplatin in human esophageal carcinoma (Eca-109) spheroids. Our results point to the potential of this model to evaluate anticancer drugs under more physiologically relevant conditions.