Micropatterned Coculture Platform for Screening Nerve-Related Anticancer Drugs

Accumulating evidence suggests that the neural microenvironment plays a vital role in the development and metastasis of cancers. The development of drug candidates or drug combinations targeting the neural microenvironment is thus becoming increasingly urgent. However, the low content of conventional drug screening platforms is a bottleneck that limits the drug evaluation process. In this study, we present a micropatterned coculture-based high-content (μCHC) platform by integrating a micropatterned coculture chip with the high-content analysis (HCA) system, for studying the neuron-cancer cell interactions and drug screening (simultaneously detecting 96 kinds of post-drug-treated conditions). We investigate the contribution of neurons on the migration of cancer cells from different tissues and validate the capability of the μCHC system to study the interaction between neurons and cancer cells. Moreover, we test the effects of individual or combinatory agents targeting the neuron or cancer cell on the neuron-cancer cell interactions, which proposes an optimized therapy regime for targeting both nervous and cancerous factors. Our study suggests that the μCHC system is a facile platform for screening drug candidates or drug combinations for clinical cancer therapy with high efficiency and fidelity.