Emerging Technologies for Cancer Research: Towards Personalized Medicine with Microfluidic Platforms and 3D Tumor Models

TL;DR

This review discusses cutting-edge microfluidic technologies and 3D tumor models that advance personalized cancer research by improving detection, understanding, and modeling of tumor biology.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent microfluidic platforms and 3D models, highlighting their potential in personalized cancer diagnosis and therapy.

Findings

Microfluidic platforms enhance detection of circulating tumor cells.

3D tumor models better mimic in vivo tumor microenvironment.

Innovative techniques improve exosome isolation and analysis.

Abstract

In the present review, we describe three hot topics in cancer research such as circulating tumor cells, exosomes, and 3D environment models. The first section is dedicated to microfluidic platforms for detecting circulating tumor cells, including both affinity based methods that take advantage of antibodies and aptamers, and label free approaches, exploiting cancer cells physical features and, more recently, abnormal cancer metabolism. In the second section, we briefly describe the biology of exosomes and their role in cancer, as well as conventional techniques for their isolation and innovative microfluidic platforms. In the third section, the importance of tumor microenvironment is highlighted, along with techniques for modeling it in vitro. Finally, we discuss limitations of two dimensional monolayer methods and describe advantages and disadvantages of different three dimensional tumor systems for cell cell interaction analysis and their potential applications in cancer management.