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Thread as a Low-Cost Material for Microfluidic Assays on Intact Tumor Slices

In this paper we describe the use of thread as a low-cost material for a microfluidic chemosensitivity assay that uses intact tumor tissue ex vivo. Today, the need for new and effective cancer treatments is greater than ever, but unfortunately, the cost of developing new chemotherapy drugs has never...

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Autores principales: Rumaner, Maxwell, Horowitz, Lisa, Ovadya, Avital, Folch, Albert
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6680473/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31319620
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi10070481
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author Rumaner, Maxwell
Horowitz, Lisa
Ovadya, Avital
Folch, Albert
author_facet Rumaner, Maxwell
Horowitz, Lisa
Ovadya, Avital
Folch, Albert
author_sort Rumaner, Maxwell
collection PubMed
description In this paper we describe the use of thread as a low-cost material for a microfluidic chemosensitivity assay that uses intact tumor tissue ex vivo. Today, the need for new and effective cancer treatments is greater than ever, but unfortunately, the cost of developing new chemotherapy drugs has never been higher. Implementation of low-cost microfluidic techniques into drug screening devices could potentially mitigate some of the immense cost of drug development. Thread is an ideal material for use in drug screening as it is inexpensive, widely available, and can transport liquid without external pumping hardware, i.e., via capillary action. We have developed an inexpensive microfluidic delivery prototype that uses silk threads to selectively deliver fluids onto subregions of living xenograft tumor slices. Our device can be fabricated completely for less than $0.25 in materials and requires no external equipment to operate. We found that by varying thread materials, we could optimize device characteristics, such as flow rate; we specifically explored the behavior of silk, nylon, cotton, and polyester. The incremental cost of our device is insignificant compared to the tissue culture supplies. The use of thread as a microfluidic material has the potential to produce inexpensive, accessible, and user-friendly devices for drug testing that are especially suited for low-resource settings.
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spelling pubmed-66804732019-08-09 Thread as a Low-Cost Material for Microfluidic Assays on Intact Tumor Slices Rumaner, Maxwell Horowitz, Lisa Ovadya, Avital Folch, Albert Micromachines (Basel) Article In this paper we describe the use of thread as a low-cost material for a microfluidic chemosensitivity assay that uses intact tumor tissue ex vivo. Today, the need for new and effective cancer treatments is greater than ever, but unfortunately, the cost of developing new chemotherapy drugs has never been higher. Implementation of low-cost microfluidic techniques into drug screening devices could potentially mitigate some of the immense cost of drug development. Thread is an ideal material for use in drug screening as it is inexpensive, widely available, and can transport liquid without external pumping hardware, i.e., via capillary action. We have developed an inexpensive microfluidic delivery prototype that uses silk threads to selectively deliver fluids onto subregions of living xenograft tumor slices. Our device can be fabricated completely for less than $0.25 in materials and requires no external equipment to operate. We found that by varying thread materials, we could optimize device characteristics, such as flow rate; we specifically explored the behavior of silk, nylon, cotton, and polyester. The incremental cost of our device is insignificant compared to the tissue culture supplies. The use of thread as a microfluidic material has the potential to produce inexpensive, accessible, and user-friendly devices for drug testing that are especially suited for low-resource settings. MDPI 2019-07-17 /pmc/articles/PMC6680473/ /pubmed/31319620 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi10070481 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Rumaner, Maxwell
Horowitz, Lisa
Ovadya, Avital
Folch, Albert
Thread as a Low-Cost Material for Microfluidic Assays on Intact Tumor Slices
title Thread as a Low-Cost Material for Microfluidic Assays on Intact Tumor Slices
title_full Thread as a Low-Cost Material for Microfluidic Assays on Intact Tumor Slices
title_fullStr Thread as a Low-Cost Material for Microfluidic Assays on Intact Tumor Slices
title_full_unstemmed Thread as a Low-Cost Material for Microfluidic Assays on Intact Tumor Slices
title_short Thread as a Low-Cost Material for Microfluidic Assays on Intact Tumor Slices
title_sort thread as a low-cost material for microfluidic assays on intact tumor slices
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6680473/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31319620
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi10070481
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