Tissue Engineering Approaches for Tumor Immunotherapy

To develop tissue on a chip as models of human tumors and tumor-immune interactions.

Goals:

  • Establish simple model of human tumor cells growing in tissue microenvironment on a chip (lung/NSCLC, Skin/melanoma, etc)
  • Test ability to add in lymphocytes and/or myeloid cells
  • Develop methods to monitor and evaluate immune cells on chip and extracted from chip

Accomplishments:

  • Developing experimental techniques to maintain patient-derived tumor explants in vitro.
  • Engineering a co-culture platform that allows vascularized and perfusable tumor tissues. Tumor spheroids made out of dissociated lung cancer cells.

 

Project Participants:  John Wherry, Dan Huh, Nicole Lu (PICI@Penn Directory)