Engineered model tumors look to advance cancer drug application

Elizabeth Lipke, faculty member in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Auburn University, and her team are developing 3D in vitro cancer models for use in drug-testing applications. Employing a range of metastatic and non-metastatic cancer cell lines, they are encapsulating the cells in hydrogel materials to create tissue-engineered "tumor microspheres" and "tumor millibeads."

Using 2D monolayer cultures and self-aggregated 3D tumor models, researchers and scientists are unable to capture key features of the complex in vivo tumor, severely limiting their ability to obtain clinically-relevant data in cancer drug-testing applications. In addition, the information acquired from these models, including identification of new cancer drug candidates, does not reflect the actual response seen in animal testing and human trials.

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