DEMONSTRATING THE BIOMIMETIC VERSATILITY OF A MAGNETICALLY INTEGRATED TUMOR-ON-CHIP PLATFORM

For effective and translational anti-cancer drug screening applications, there exists a necessity to bioengineer a tumor microenvironment with both physiological relevance and high-throughput scalability.In this work, we report the design and development of a custom-engineered, magnetically integrated tumor-on-chip (MiToC), and demonstrate the utility of this system for investigating the early-stage in vivo-like tumor behavior mediated by critical components of the tumor microenvironment.Herein, tumor spheroids generated and cultured on hydrogel based multi-microwell plates, and embedded within collagen matrix were magnetically hybrid-integrated with a sacrificial bioprinting enabled microfluidic system fabricated on a porous membrane, so as to mimic a physiologically relevant tumor microenvironment.We demonstrate the versatility of this system to mimic two different inflammatory conditions, namely, tumor-mediated dysregulated immune response and pro-angiogenic modulations of vascular endothelium, confirming the utility of this platform for on-chip drug testing applications.