Cancer Center tests treatment using ‘glioblastoma-on-a-chip’ and wafer technology

Jonathan Forbes, MD. Photo/Connor Boyle/UC Marketing + Brand.

Currently, neurosurgeons can use wafers that release either radiation or general cell-killing agents, but Forbes said these treatments are nonspecific, expensive and not found to provide much benefit to improve patient outcomes.

"After surgery to remove the tumor, we have unencumbered access to a resection cavity that we know microscopically is invaded by tumor cells," said Forbes, associate professor and residency program director in the Department of Neurosurgery in UC's College of Medicine and a UC Gardner Neuroscience Institute neurosurgeon. "Why not use this access to enhance the central nervous system's ability to clear residual tumor cells?"

Medical student Beatrice Zucca explained the first step of the project was to determine what immune-stimulating molecule was safe and powerful enough to activate the brain's immune system. The team landed on a protein called Interleukin-15 (IL-15).

"IL-15 is exceptionally effective at activating immune populations that are critical for recognizing and killing cancer cells," said Zucca, who worked as a neurooncology research fellow under Forbes' mentorship last fall. "It improves their survival, expands their numbers and enhances their cell-killing function, making it an ideal candidate for driving a coordinated immune attack against a highly-resistant cancer like glioblastoma."

Ricardo Barrile, PhD. Photo/Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand.

The grant funding will allow the team to test how the immunostimulatory preparation actually stimulates the immune system using glioblastoma-on-a-chip technology developed in partnership with Ricardo Barrile, PhD.

"An organ-on-a-chip is a miniaturized model of a living organ engineered to incorporate the minimal biological elements needed to recreate specific disease conditions," said Barrile, assistant professor of biomedical engineering in UC's College of Engineering and Applied Science. "Instead of testing drugs on flat plastic dishes or relying solely on animal models - which often fail to predict human results due to genetic disparities - we use 3D bioprinting and microfluidics to build a living model of a human organ."

Barrile's lab was the first-ever to build a model that integrates human brain cells with glioblastoma cells via a combination of 3D printing and bioprinting. The glioblastoma-on-a-chip model also includes a bioprinted "blood vessel" channel to mimic how drugs move from the bloodstream to the brain and a channel to replicate the immune system.

"This provides a 'human-relevant' platform to test therapies safely and accurately before they reach a patient," Barrile said. "Integrating the immune system was the missing piece and is the key to capture the natural composition of glioblastoma, which in a patient is typically made up to 30% of immune cells. These cells are typically lost during in vitro cell culture."

While this phase of the project will focus on how the wafer affects the immune response to glioblastoma cells, it could also help move toward the validation of Barrile's glioblastoma-on-a-chip as a personalized medicine tool.

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