Primary Human Gastric Cancer Cells Integrated Hydrogel Microcapsules for Personalized Drug Screening

Organ-on-a-chip is highly valuable for tumor drug screening, but further exploration in gastric cancer is needed. Here, we propose an innovative platform to cultivate primary gastric cancer cells using microfluidic encapsulation, enabling three-dimensional (3D) tumor growth and clinical drug assessment. We employ microfluidic electrospray technology to mix human primary gastric cancer cells with carboxymethyl cellulose and encapsulate them within alginate core-shell microcapsules. Tumor cells spontaneously form spheroids and proliferate rapidly. These tumor spheroids display multiple characteristics of natural tumors and exhibit heterogeneity within them. Subsequently, microcapsules containing tumor spheroids are combined with a microfluidic chip that is designed with a gradient generator and a culture chamber. This platform enables dynamic perfusion of various chemotherapy drug solutions and the high-throughput generation of drug concentration gradients to assess tumor spheroid sensitivity to these drugs. The findings reveal variations in drug sensitivity among gastric cancer spheroids from different patients. Notably, the drug sensitivity profiles obtained from the tumor spheroid assays show significant consistency with the actual clinical responses of the corresponding patients. These outcomes underscore the potential of integrating microcapsule-cultured tumor spheroid models with microfluidic technology to create a dependable and precise drug evaluation platform for clinical applications in gastric cancer treatment.