Microfluidics & tumour heterogeneity

Recently, Albert Folch's group published a Nature Precision Oncology paper showing how cancer complexity could be addressed using microfluidics.

In particular, they stressed out the critical aspect of cancer tumour heterogeneity and drug treatment. Tumour heterogeneity can be used to better determine cancer treatment lines. The main issue remains to design a relevant model to assess this parameter and to validate drug candidates. Behind this simple problematic is in fact a complex story at the frontier of microfluidics and biology

A small but key detail of this story is the manufacturing of Dr. Horowitz's Oncoslice microfluidic device. PDMS was first used to build the device but rapidly, PMMA was chosen for scaling-up and industrialization constraints. (For more information, please refer to the first post from the series of "Microfluidics for cell biology" posts).

Finding alternatives to PDMS is a hot topic at Elveflow and a topical problematic in #microfluidics. please comment "Yes" below and I'll get in touch with you to provide you more infos. ??We reviewed the topic and also have a sister company focusing on this specific aspect.

We are passionate about #microfluidics and #entrepreneuship. On behalf of all the Elveflow team, I wish all the best to OncoFluidics, co-funded by Dr. Horowitz and Prof. Folch. ????

For more information:

?? Behind the Nature paper

?? Our Elvesys European project Prochip