The Immune-Tumour Microenvironment on a Chip - 001
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Development and Assessment of a Microfluidic Chip Based Model of the Human Immune-Tumour Microenvironment for Improved Cancer Therapeutic Drug Testing
IRAS ID
277735
Contact name
Peter Tyrer
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Enplas Europe Limited
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
n/a, n/a
Duration of Study in the UK
7 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
In recent years, there has been growing interest in the development of immunotherapeutics to treat cancer, for example the immune checkpoint inhibitor Imfinzi for urothelial carcinoma.
Between the years 2000-2015, only 3.4% of oncology drugs in development were successfully approved. A significant proportion of this attrition is attributed to the lack of suitable in vitro models that properly reflect human physiology to test prospective drugs. Therefore, there is demand for more realistic models.
Our research objective is to develop microfluidic "organ-on-a-chip" cell culture devices to study the interactions between cancer and the human immune system. This work requires the use of human immune cells isolated from healthy and patient blood which will be cultured with cancer cell line spheroids or patient derived tumour tissues. The research aims to provide a more realistic, reliable and reproducible platform for testing immuno-oncology therapeutics and thus reduce the attrition of drugs during clinical trials
REC name
East of England - Cambridge Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/EE/0148
Date of REC Opinion
16 Jun 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion