Tissue engineered 3D models for cancer metastasis and drug screening

Stanford researchers have designed a spatially patterned 3D co-culture model of cancer cells and target tissues. This model can be used as an in vitro diagnostic tool to predict the likelihood and aggressiveness of cancer metastasis towards specific target tissue types or as a drug screening platform using patient-specific cells to determine the optimal drug treatment regimen (i.e. personalized treatment).

This tunable 3D scaffold provides higher physiologically relevance than current 2D culture methods and is cheaper and faster than animal models. Additionally, animal models are not suitable for high-throughput drug screening studies. This invention can enable the identification of effective therapeutic targets and facilitate high-throughput drug screening to effectively treat many types of cancers. Studies have been conducted for bone cancer.

Stage of Development