Nancy E. and Peter C. Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA.
Adv Biol (Weinh). 2024 Aug;8(8):e2300077. doi: 10.1002/adbi.202300077. Epub 2023 Jul 6.
Cancer immunotherapy focuses on the use of patients' adaptive immune systems to combat cancer. In the past decade, FDA has approved many immunotherapy products for cancer patients who suffer from primary tumors, tumor relapse, and metastases. However, these immunotherapies still show resistance in many patients and often lead to inconsistent responses in patients due to variations in tumor genetic mutations and tumor immune microenvironment. Microfluidics-based organ-on-a-chip technologies or microphysiological systems have opened new ways that can provide relatively fast screening for personalized immunotherapy and help researchers and clinicians understand tumor-immune interactions in a patient-specific manner. They also have the potential to overcome the limitations of traditional drug screening and testing, given the models provide a more realistic 3D microenvironment with better controllability, reproducibility, and physiological relevance. This review focuses on the cutting-edge microphysiological organ-on-a-chip devices developed in recent years for studying cancer immunity and testing cancer immunotherapeutic agents, as well as some of the largest challenges of translating this technology to clinical applications in immunotherapy and personalized medicine.
癌症免疫疗法专注于利用患者的适应性免疫系统来对抗癌症。在过去的十年中，FDA 已经批准了许多免疫疗法产品用于患有原发性肿瘤、肿瘤复发和转移的癌症患者。然而，这些免疫疗法在许多患者中仍然表现出耐药性，并且由于肿瘤遗传突变和肿瘤免疫微环境的变化，经常导致患者的反应不一致。基于微流控的器官芯片技术或微生理系统为个性化免疫疗法的相对快速筛选开辟了新途径，并帮助研究人员和临床医生以患者特异性的方式理解肿瘤-免疫相互作用。鉴于这些模型提供了更逼真的 3D 微环境，具有更好的可控性、重现性和生理相关性，它们还有可能克服传统药物筛选和测试的局限性。本综述重点介绍了近年来为研究癌症免疫和测试癌症免疫治疗剂而开发的最先进的微生理器官芯片设备，以及将这项技术转化为免疫疗法和个性化医学临床应用所面临的一些最大挑战。
