Three Dimensional Microfluidic Cell Arrays for ex Vivo Drug Screening with Mimicked Vascular Flow

Currently, there are no reliable ex vivo models that predict anticancer drug responses in human tumors accurately. A comprehensive method of mimicking a 3D microenvironment to study effects of anticancer drugs on specific cancer types is essential. Here, we report the development of a three-dimensional microfluidic cell array (3D mu FCA), which reconstructs a 3D tumor microenvironment with cancer cells and microvascular endothelial cells. To mimic the in vivo spatial relationship between microvessels and nonendothelial cells embedded in extracellular matrix, three polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) layers were built into this array. The multilayer property of the device enabled the imitation of the drug delivery in a microtissue array with simulated blood circulation. This 3D mu FCA system may provide better predictions of drug responses and identification of a suitable treatment for a specific patient if biopsy samples are used. To the pharmaceutical industry, the scaling-up of our 3D mu FCA system may offer a novel high throughput screening tool.