Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 28, 2026

Microfluidic Co-Culture Models for Dissecting the Immune Response in in vitro Tumor Microenvironments

Microfluidic Co-Culture Models for Dissecting the Immune Response in in vitro Tumor Microenvironments

Published on: April 30, 2021

Engineering Organ-on-a-Chip Systems for Cancer Immunotherapy: Strategies and Assay Integration.

Jie Wang¹, Zongjie Wang^1,2

¹Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago, Chicago, IL 60642, USA.

Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland)

|May 27, 2026

Summary

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Microfluidic rare cell analysis beyond counting: workflow design from enrichment to multi-omics.

Lab on a chip·2026

Same author

Biomolecular Condensates as Protein Degradation Tools for Intracellular Targets.

Nature communications·2026

Same author

Amino acid supplementation enhances in vivo efficacy of lipid nanoparticle-mediated mRNA delivery in preclinical models.

Science translational medicine·2026

Same author

Genome-Wide CRISPR Screen Reveals PIK3CA Inhibition Enhances Lipid Nanoparticle-Mediated siRNA Delivery.

Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany)·2025

Same author

ELOVL6 activity attenuation induces mutant KRAS degradation.

Nature chemical biology·2025

Same author

Microsystem technologies for accelerating the discovery and translation of immunotherapies.

Nature reviews. Drug discovery·2025

Organ-on-a-chip (OoC) systems offer human-relevant models for cancer immunotherapy research. These advanced platforms capture dynamic immune responses, overcoming limitations of traditional methods for better drug development.

Area of Science:

Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering
Cancer Immunology
Translational Medicine

Background:

Preclinical models often fail to accurately predict human immune responses in cancer immunotherapy.
Existing models lack the complexity and dynamic nature of human immune-tumor interactions.
Need for human-relevant platforms to study immune cell trafficking, cytokine dynamics, and metabolic shifts.

Purpose of the Study:

To review engineering strategies for developing immune-competent organ-on-a-chip (OoC) platforms for cancer immunotherapy.
To highlight the importance of integrated measurement workflows and embedded sensing for dynamic response capture.
To discuss challenges and future directions for OoC systems in immunotherapy research and development.

Main Methods:

Keywords:

immune cells immunological assays immunotherapy organ-on-a-chip

More Related Videos

Co-Culture In Vitro Systems to Reproduce the Cancer-Immunity Cycle

Co-Culture In Vitro Systems to Reproduce the Cancer-Immunity Cycle

Published on: June 7, 2024

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: May 28, 2026

Microfluidic Co-Culture Models for Dissecting the Immune Response in in vitro Tumor Microenvironments

Microfluidic Co-Culture Models for Dissecting the Immune Response in in vitro Tumor Microenvironments

Published on: April 30, 2021

Co-Culture In Vitro Systems to Reproduce the Cancer-Immunity Cycle

Co-Culture In Vitro Systems to Reproduce the Cancer-Immunity Cycle

Published on: June 7, 2024

Summarizing engineering approaches for OoC platform architectures and immune cell incorporation.

Focusing on integrated assay workflows designed to capture dynamic and state-dependent immune responses.

Emphasizing the use of embedded sensing modalities (cytokine, oxygen, impedance) for kinetic data acquisition.

Main Results:

Immune-competent OoC platforms can recapitulate complex, dynamic human immune responses relevant to cancer.
Embedded sensing provides crucial kinetic and state-variable data for mechanistic studies and therapeutic evaluation.
OoC systems enable evaluation of therapeutic efficacy and immunotoxicity under controlled microenvironmental conditions.

Conclusions:

Immune-competent OoC technologies are crucial for advancing cancer immunotherapy by providing human-relevant data.
Coordinated design of platforms, cell incorporation, and assay workflows is essential for capturing immune dynamics.
Addressing challenges in standardization and reproducibility will accelerate the adoption of OoC systems in drug development.