title: Cancer-on-a-chip systems at the frontier of nanomedicine.
abstract: Nanomedicine provides a unique opportunity for promoting drug efficacy through enhanced delivery mechanisms. However, its translation into the clinics has been relatively slow compared with the large amount of research occurring in laboratory settings. Given the limitations of conventional cell culture models and preclinical animal models, we discuss the potential utility of recently developed cancer-on-a-chip platforms, which maximally replicate the pathophysiology of the human tumor microenvironments, as alternatives for effective evaluation of nanomedicine. We begin with a brief discussion of nanomedicine, then chart the history of organ-on-a-chip platform development and their recent evolution as tools for modeling different cancers for assessing nanomedicine efficacy, concluding with future perspectives for the field.
authors.affiliation: Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Electronic address: yszhang@research.bwh.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Yu Shrike
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomaterial and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3G9, Canada.
authors.forename: Yi-Nan
authors.initials: YN
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Institute of Biomedical Science, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, PR China. Electronic address: weijiazhang@fudan.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Weijia
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D040761:Biomimetic Materials; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D050997:Nanomedicine; D009369:Neoplasms