Figure 1.

The concept of tumour-on-a-chip. (a) A microfluidic device that has tissue culture, nutrient and small molecule supply and waste removal functions for growing tumours on a chip. Adapted from [12]. (b) The ultimate goal is to grow a three-dimensional tumour on chip with a complex tissue structure consisting of tumour cells, stromal cells and blood vessels. (c) An example of tumour-on-a-chip in which lung cancer spheroids were embedded in micro-patterned three-dimensional matrices immediately contiguous to a microchannel lined with endothelial cells. Reprinted with permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd. (d) The physiological microarchitecture is recapitulated in the breast-cancer-on-chip microdevice with two cell-culture chambers separated by an ECM-derived membrane. Adapted from [13] with permission from the Royal Society of Chemistry.