Human Lung-on-Chip Model Reveals How Breathing Regulates Lung Cancer

Study in a Sentence: Researchers recently used a lung-on-chip model to study human lung cancer cell growth in response to drugs and breathing. Although they found that breathing suppresses cancer cell growth and spreading, the breathing motion also promotes resistance to drug therapy targeting key proteins driving the cancer.

Healthy for Humans: This human-relevant model can be used to further investigate how cancer cells persist and to develop drugs to overcome cancer drug resistance.

Redefining Research: This physiological-relevant chip model allows researchers to study lung cancer behavior in a human-relevant microenvironment and produces results that are consistent with those found in human clinical trials.

Image Source

This image shows how lung cancer cells can be grown as a tumor cell colony (blue) next to normal human small airway cells (purple) in the lung epithelial channel of the Lung Cancer Chip. Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University