Engineering a Tumour on a Chip
Meet Dr Joash Joy, a postdoctoral researcher in Professor Fran Balkwill‘s lab at the Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London. Dr Joy is engineering artificial tumours to explore how cancer therapies can be made more effective. He uses a pioneering approach known as ‘tumour on a chip’ that replicates the complex and dynamic nature of tumours in living organisms – something simpler models often fail to achieve.
In the video below, we meet Dr Joy, take a look inside the intricate tumour models he has developed, and learn how this research could help make state-of-the-art immunotherapies more effective for a broader range of patients.
Hi! I’m Joash. I’m a postdoc in Professor Fran Balkwill’s lab at the Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London.
My grandfather, who was also my godfather, was diagnosed with late-stage stomach cancer. Unfortunately, he passed away not so long after his diagnosis. His suffering was one of the driving forces that led me to pursue a career in cancer research.
We develop artificial tumours in our lab using cancer cells derived from patients. Using these tumour models, we study a specific immune therapy called CAR-T cell therapy.
CAR-T cell therapy involves training your own immune cells to recognise and fight cancer cells. This type of therapy seems to be quite effective in some types of leukaemia, where we see complete remission in most cases. But when it comes to solid tumours, it hasn’t been very effective. So, we wanted to see why that is and how we could improve CAR-T cell therapy in solid tumours.
Cancer cells don’t exist in a vacuum. Tumours are part of an incredibly intricate neighbourhood of cancer cells, immune cells, blood vessels, and even healthy cells. So, when we study the interaction of CAR-T cells with cancer cells, we need to incorporate these factors into our experiments in the lab.
We developed a microfluidic model of ovarian cancer. Microfluidic models are bioengineered chips with tiny channels of flow – you can inject cells into these channels where they will grow to form vascular networks and tumour environments.
In our new paper, we describe two ovarian cancer cells. Theoretically, both of these cells should be killed by the CAR-T cells, but we were surprised that one of them was sensitive and the other one was resistant to CAR-T cells.
Our study is a proof-of-concept study. More research is required to translate our findings into the clinic. But overall, what we believe is that combining CAR-T cell therapy with other forms of cancer therapies could possibly induce better efficiency of CAR-T cell therapy in solid tumours.
The great thing about working at BCI is that I was able to meet great scientists. I believe that we do high-standard cancer research here, and I’m so glad to be part of it.
In a new study published in Cancer Research, Dr Joy used a tumour-on-a-chip model of ovarian cancer to investigate how it interacts with CAR-T cell therapy – an innovative type of therapy that trains our own immune system to recognise and fight cancer cells. While this therapy has been highly successful in treating blood cancers such as leukaemia, it has not been as effective against solid tumours such as ovarian cancer.
One reason may be that these cancer cells form part of an incredibly intricate neighbourhood that also includes immune cells, blood vessels, and even healthy cells, in addition to a cocktail of different chemical signals, altogether known as the tumour microenvironment. These factors may combine to suppress immune responses against the cancer cells, blocking the effects of CAR-T cells.
By accurately modelling how cancer cells and CAR-T cells interact within a realistic microenvironment, Dr Joy, Professor Balkwill and their team aim to uncover insights that could lead to improved treatments for patients with solid tumours.
This work was made possible thanks to funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance and Cancer Research UK.
Credits
- Original paper (and tumour films): Joy et al. Cancer Research (2024) 84 (15): 2432-2449.
- Music: The Farmhouse by Silver Maple (CC BY 4.0)