A Perfused Two-Chamber System for Anticancer Drug Screening

Abstract

A cell culture microfluidic device has been developed to test the cytotoxicity of anticancer drugs while reproducing multi-organ interactions in vitro. Cells were cultured in separate chambers representing the liver and tumor. The two chambers were connected through a channel to mimick the blood flow. Glioblastoma (GBM) cancer cells (M059K) and hepatoma cells (HepG2) were cultured in the tumor and the liver chambers, respectively. The cytotoxic effect of cancer treatment drug Temolozomide (TMZ) was tested using this two chamber system. The experimental results showed that with the liver cells, the cancer cells showed much higher viability than those without the liver cells. This indicates that the liver metabolism has strong effect on the toxicity of the anticancer drug. The results demonstrated that the perfused two chamber cell culture system has the potential to be used as a platform for drug screening in a more physiologically realistic environment.