Department of Biomedical Engineering, CUNY - City College of New York, New York, NY, 10031, USA.
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14214, USA.
Lab Chip. 2024 Jan 30;24(3):396-407. doi: 10.1039/d3lc00662j.
The effects of immunotherapeutics on interactions between immune and cancer cells are modulated by multiple components in the tumour microenvironment (TME), including endothelium and tumour stroma, which provide both a physical barrier and immunosuppressive stimuli. Herein, we report a recirculating chip to enable continuous immune cell recirculation through a microfluidic cell array to include these crucial players. This system consists of a three-layered cell array (μFCA) spatially emulating the TME, with tailored fluidic circuits establishing T cell recirculation. This platform enables the study of dynamics among the TME, immune cells in a circulatory system and cancer cell responses thereof. Through this system, we found that tumour endothelium hindered T cell infiltration into the reconstructed breast cancer tumour compartment. This negative effect was alleviated when treated with anti-human PD-L1 (programmed cell death ligand 1) antibody. Another key stromal component - cancer associated fibroblasts - attenuated T cell infiltration, compared against normal fibroblasts, and led to reduced apoptotic activity in cancer cells. These results confirm the capability of our tumour-on-a-chip system in identifying some key axes to target in overcoming barriers to immunotherapy by recapitulating immune cell interactions with the reconstructed TME. Our results also attest to the feasibility of scaling up this system for high-throughput cancer immunotherapeutic screening.
免疫疗法对免疫细胞和癌细胞之间相互作用的影响受到肿瘤微环境(TME)中多种成分的调节,包括内皮细胞和肿瘤基质,它们既提供了物理屏障,又提供了免疫抑制性刺激。在此,我们报告了一种再循环芯片,可通过微流控细胞阵列实现免疫细胞的连续再循环,包括这些关键成分。该系统由三层细胞阵列(μFCA)空间模拟 TME,并采用定制的流体回路建立 T 细胞再循环。该平台能够研究 TME、循环系统中的免疫细胞以及癌细胞对其的反应之间的动态关系。通过该系统,我们发现肿瘤内皮细胞阻碍 T 细胞浸润重建的乳腺癌肿瘤隔室。当用抗人 PD-L1(程序性细胞死亡配体 1)抗体处理时,这种负面影响得到缓解。另一个关键的基质成分——肿瘤相关成纤维细胞——与正常成纤维细胞相比,减弱了 T 细胞的浸润,并导致癌细胞凋亡活性降低。这些结果证实了我们的肿瘤芯片系统能够识别一些关键轴,通过重建免疫细胞与重建的 TME 的相互作用,从而克服免疫疗法的障碍。我们的结果还证明了该系统用于高通量癌症免疫治疗筛选的可行性。