Innovative testing platform could enable more precise, personalized immunotherapy
An innovative testing platform that more closely mimics what cancer encounters in the body may allow for more precise, personalized therapies by enabling the rapid study of multiple therapeutic combinations against tumor cells. The platform, which uses a three-dimensional environment to more closely mirror a tumor microenvironment, is demonstrated in research published in
Communications Biology.
"This whole platform really gives us a way to optimize personalized immunotherapy on a rapid, high throughput scale," said Jonathan Dordick, Institute Professor of chemical and biological engineering and member of the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies (CBIS) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who led this research. "You can imagine somebody having cancer, and you quickly biopsy the tumor and then you use this biochip platform to identify very quickly -- within a day or two -- what specific treatment modality might be ideally suited against a particular cancer."