Replicating in the laboratory the characteristics of a tumor and the surrounding cells to be able to study how it responds to treatments. That is what the MIRO device (micro immune response on chip), developed by scientists from the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the Research Institute of Hospital del Mar in Barcelona, achieves.
The tool, whose proof of concept was published this Thursday in the journal Nature Communications, can speed up the development of new cancer treatments as well as the personalization of therapies.
The tool allows recreating the real conditions of the tumor, including the interaction between tumor cells with the surrounding connective tissue and the immune response, a key scenario to understand why sometimes treatments like immunotherapy do not work, as explained by Xavier Trepat, ICREA research professor at IBEC, where he leads the Integrative Cell and Tissue Dynamics group.
"It is a miniaturized model of the tumor of approximately one millimeter in size in which tumor cells, cells from its environment, and also immune system cells can be cultured," the researcher points out.
Being able to emulate both the characteristics of the tumor and its environment and the interactions with the immune system is important since, often, it is the microenvironment surrounding the cancer that acts as a barrier to prevent the body's defense cells from targeting the tumor. However, replicating these interactions in animal models or cellular studies is complex.
In contrast, this new model, Trepat points out, offers an important advantage in this regard. "Many therapies show promising results in the laboratory, in vitro, and in mouse models, but do not work as well when translated to humans. MIRO allows recreating the interactions between the tumor, the environment, and the immune system and allows directly testing the treatments that would be used with patients," adds the scientist, who believes that the tool could have a significant clinical impact both from the perspective of treatment personalization and testing new therapies.
Researchers have already tested the utility of the tool with samples of HER-2 positive breast cancer. The experiments have allowed verifying the importance of the environment surrounding the tumor in inhibiting the action of one of the targeted therapies against the tumor, the monoclonal antibody trastuzumab.
"Thanks to MIRO, we have been able to track immune cells, see how they lose speed, movement, as they approach the tumor, which causes the treatment not to work. They encounter a barrier formed by the tumor environment and remain blocked," stated Alexandre Calon, head of the Translational Research Laboratory in the tumor microenvironment at the Research Institute of Hospital del Mar and author of the study.
The device is based on microfluidic techniques that allow manipulating fluids and cells on a very small scale. It was designed by Anna Labernadie, who developed the microfluidic system during her postdoctoral research at IBEC and currently leads the Cellular Behavior and Tissue Bioengineering laboratory at the Prince Felipe Research Center (CIPF) in Valencia.
IBEC, ICREA, and the Research Institute of Hospital del Mar have already filed a joint patent application for the MIRO technology.