Figure 1.

HCC-on-a-chip. (A) Schematic representation of the HCC-on-a-chip to mimic liver cancer. The HSCs are one of the key components in the HCC microenvironments and blood vessels are essential for nutrition supply and metabolites elimination. The chip was designed to contain a central chamber to mimic tumor microenvironments and side channels to mimic blood vessels for nutrients supply. Critical events including tumor cell proliferation, endothelial cell invasion, tumor cell drug resistance, NK cell infiltration and exhaustion were assessed in the HCC-on-a-chip model. (B) Structure of the HCC-on-a-chip. The whole chip was 16 mm × 7 mm (length × width) in dimension containing a round central chamber and two lateral channels. The central chamber was 5 mm in diameter and 120 μm in depth, with a separate inlet and outlet for hydrogel injection. The two lateral channels were not interconnected, allowing for the perfusion of different solutions. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of microbarriers and magnified structure of delineated area were shown. (C) The fluorescence microscopy images of HCCLM3 cancer cells (red), LX2 cells (blue) and HUVEC cells (green) were shown on Days 1 and 5 in the HCC-on-a-chip model. Scale bar: 1 mm. Representative areas were displayed with magnified three-dimensional pictures.