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University of Illinois Cancer Center member Steve Seung-Young Lee, PhD, is the Principal Investigator on a $386,000 National Cancer Institute R21 grant that includes other Cancer Center co-investigators.

The grant will help investigators create a microfluidic device for direct personalized immunotherapy screening on a core needle biopsy.

The project, “Microfluidic Immunotherapy Screening on a Core Needle Biopsy,” brings together Cancer Center Translational Oncology Research Program members Lee (pictured middle), Assistant Professor in the Retzky College of Pharmacy, and Kent Hoskins, MD, (pictured left) UI Health Oncology Service Line Medical Director, with Cancer Biology Research Program member David Eddington, PhD, (pictured right) Professor in the UIC Colleges of Engineering and Medicine and Dean of the Graduate College. Rachel Lane, Research Specialist in the Biostatistics Core at the Center for Clinical and Translational Science at UIC is the other co-investigator.

Read the abstract excerpt below.

Since a number of various immunotherapies have been approved for cancer treatment, it is crucial to select the right treatment among many immunotherapy options for a successful cancer therapy. Although tissue microfluidic devices have shown potential as chemotherapy screening tools, none are suitable for personalized immunotherapy screening. In this project, we will 1) develop a ‘core needle biopsy’ microfluidic cassette and protocols for functional immune assays and 2) validate the microfluidic approach for screening immune checkpoint blockade therapy with core needle biopsies from mouse and PDX breast tumors. We believe the microfluidic immunotherapy screening on individual cancer patients’ tumor core biopsies will provide solid guidance to oncologists in choosing the right immunotherapies for their patients.