UC Irvine

About 95% of anti-cancer drugs that show promise during preclinical study fail to gain FDA approval for clinical use. The gap between in vitro and in vivo preclinical study calls for physiologically relevant in vitro models that can better serve as a reliable drug-screening tool. The vascularized micro-tumor (VMT) is a novel three-dimensional model system that recapitulates the complex tumor microenvironment within a transparent microfluidic device that allows real-time study of drug response and tumor-stromal interactions. Here we validate our model system by showing that gene expression, tumor heterogeneity, and treatment response in the VMT more closely model tumor clinicopathology than current standard drug screening modalities.