Department of Biology, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Beirut 1107 2020, Lebanon.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Beirut 1107 2020, Lebanon.
Pharmacol Ther. 2022 Sep;237:108156. doi: 10.1016/j.pharmthera.2022.108156. Epub 2022 Feb 10.
Breast cancer has the highest cancer incidence rate in women worldwide. Therapies for breast cancer have shown high success rates, yet many cases of recurrence and drug resistance are still reported. Developing innovative strategies for studying breast cancer may improve therapeutic outcomes of the disease by providing better insight into the associated molecular mechanisms. A novel advancement in breast cancer research is the utilization of organ-on-a-chip (OOAC) technology to establish in vitro physiologically relevant breast cancer biomimetic models. This emerging technology combines microfluidics and tissue culturing methods to establish organ-specific micro fabricated culture models. Here, we shed light on the advantages of OOAC platforms over conventional in vivo and in vitro models in terms of mimicking tissue heterogeneity, disease progression, and facilitating pharmacological drug testing with a focus on models of the mammary gland in both normal and breast cancer states. By highlighting the various designs and applications of the breast-on-a-chip platforms, we show that the latter propose means to facilitate breast cancer-related studies and provide an efficient approach for therapeutic drug screening in vitro.
乳腺癌是全球女性中癌症发病率最高的癌症。乳腺癌的治疗方法已经显示出了很高的成功率，但仍有许多复发和耐药的病例报告。开发研究乳腺癌的创新策略，通过更好地了解相关的分子机制，可能会改善疾病的治疗效果。乳腺癌研究的一个新进展是利用器官芯片（OOAC）技术来建立体外生理相关的乳腺癌仿生模型。这项新兴技术结合了微流控和组织培养方法来建立器官特异性的微制造培养模型。在这里，我们重点介绍了 OOAC 平台在模拟组织异质性、疾病进展以及促进药物药理学测试方面相对于传统的体内和体外模型的优势，同时也介绍了正常和乳腺癌状态下乳腺模型的各种设计和应用。通过展示乳腺芯片平台的各种设计和应用，我们表明，后者为促进与乳腺癌相关的研究提供了一种手段，并为体外治疗药物筛选提供了一种有效的方法。
