Validating antimetastatic effects of natural products in an engineered microfluidic platform mimicking tumor microenvironment.

ABSTRACT: Development of new, antimetastatic drugs from natural products has been substantially constrained by the lack of a reliable in vitro screening system. Such a system should ideally mimic the native, three-dimensional (3D) tumor microenvironment involving different cell types and allow quantitative analysis of cell behavior critical for metastasis. These requirements are largely unmet in the current model systems, leading to poor predictability of the in vitro collected data for in vivo trials, as well as prevailing inconsistency among different in vitro tests. In the present study, we report application of a 3D, microfluidic device for validation of the antimetastatic effects of 12 natural compounds. This system supports co-culture of endothelial and cancer cells in their native 3D morpholo

SUBMITTER: Niu Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4310574 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature