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U of T Engineering is a leader in health care engineering. Together with doctors, medical researchers, policymakers and industry, we are helping people around the world live longer, healthier lives.

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CHE is a leader in interdisciplinary research and education in healthcare engineering. Its research directly impacts healthcare organizations and partners in practice.

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Researchers at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering have designed a new microfluidic platform that allows for unprecedented control and manipulation of tumor shapes — a largely unexplored area with great potential to advance cancer research.   

The work, led by Professor Edmond Young (MIE, BME), offers new insights into how the shape of tumours can predict cancer cell behaviour and aggressiveness, which opens new pathways for more personalized and targeted cancer care.  

“While there are several platforms for in vitro modelling of spheroids — three-dimensional aggregates of cells that can mimic tissues and mini tumours — a challenge in the cancer research field has been the inability to control the shape, recovery and location of these cancer organoids,” says Sina Kheiri (MIE PhD 2T4), the co-lead author of the study, which was recently published in Advanced Materials. 

“So, researchers end up with these tumours-on-a-chip that can’t be easily characterized because they are stuck on the device and can only be observed through optical microscopy.”  

The new platform, called Recoverable-Spheroid-on-a-Chip with Unrestricted External Shape (ReSCUE), gives researchers the ability to recover and release tumoroids to perform downstream analysis and characterization. 

 

The platform also enables researchers to grow cancer organoids in any shape they want