Organ Chip Predicts Cancer Therapy Response

Cancer care gets personal.

In collaboration with Harvard contributors, McGill University Health Centre researchers have created a patient-specific organ-on-a-chip that can forecast whether chemotherapy will work for an individual’s cancer.

In a pilot study of eight patients with esophageal cancer, the chips predicted treatment response with 100% accuracy. By recreating both the tumour and its microenvironment, the technology could spare patients from ineffective treatments while guiding them toward therapies more likely to succeed.

“This is the first time we have been able to reproduce, outside the body, not only a person’s cancer but also the surrounding support cells and proteins—in a way that predicts treatment response very precisely.”

— Dr. Lorenzo Ferri, Director of Thoracic & Upper GI Surgery, MUHC

Read more →