Metastasis on a microchip

A lab-on-a-chip developed at

in The Netherlands will enable doctors to choose the right type and dosage of medication for cancer patients, and could help identify a mechanism to stop cancer spreading.

Dr Floor Wolbers, a scientist in the Lab-on-a-Chip group of the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology at Twente, developed the microfluidic chip as a diagnostic tool and a way to screen different drugs. It does this by allowing the doctor to examine cell death, a process called apoptosis.

In apoptosis of healthy tissue, dying cells break away from their colony, a process called anoikis. Cancer cells may release themselves but survive to migrate elsewhere to invade other tissues, a process known as metastasis.

'We wanted to look to see if the mechanism of apoptosis is changed, for example between normal cells or cancer cells, and how they respond in the presence of different drugs,' said Wolbers. 'So drug A can have a certain response, but B can have a totally different response. By using the patient's own cells, you can test which of these drugs will provide the best therapy.'