Breakthrough Microfluidic Device Could Revolutionize Diagnosis and Treatment of Cancer

A new European initiative seeks to advance microfluidic technology for isolating and cultivating circulating tumor cells, which could potentially predict cancer metastasis and direct treatment strategies.

The project, dubbed 3DSecret, brings together a diverse group of experts in microfluidics, nanosensors, artificial intelligence (AI), cell genomics, and transcriptomics from Portugal, Spain, Italy, and the UK, and a consortium partner, Sphere Fluidics (Cambridge, UK). The primary objective of 3DSecret is to create technologies that can unveil the random patterns behind metastasis at a single-cell level and predict cancer progression. The team plans to develop a microfluidic platform to isolate circulating tumor cells and cultivate them into three-dimensional spheroids containing 100 to 1,000 cells for comprehensive analysis. This process will involve surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) metabolomics profiling to track spheroid growth kinetics and spheroid sequencing.

Image: Cyto-Mine single cell analysis system (Photo courtesy of Sphere Fluidics)

These spheroids will maintain the clonal information from the originating cell, eliminating the need for DNA amplification and thus reducing sequencing costs. The gathered metabolomics and genomics data will feed an AI algorithm that will ultimately be capable of pinpointing cells responsible for metastasis and identifying other underlying patterns. In the future, such tools could help diagnose cancer and direct disease treatment, such as estimating a patient's malignancy score from a liquid biopsy. This technology could also facilitate the identification of potential "metastatic-associated -omic panels" and serve as a platform for drug testing.

As a consortium partner, Sphere Fluidics is offering its microfluidic, droplet-based Cyto-Mine single-cell isolation and assay platform, which integrates cell isolation, screening, sorting, imaging, and verification. Sphere Fluidics will also support the development of a unified microfluidic device called the 3DSecret-chip, designed to form 3D spheroids from individual cancer cells.

“The 3DSecret project, besides having the potential to unlock hidden mechanisms behind metastasis, will provide bleeding tech breakthrough developments to the fields of microfluidics, single-cell studies, sequencing and AI applied to health,” said Dr. Sara Abalde-Cela, Project Coordinator, 3DSecret.

“The anticipated technical and scientific discoveries within the 3DSecret program hold great potential to revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of cancer by taking a radical bottom-up holistic approach: from cancer single-cells to 3D spheroids,” added Dr. Frank F Craig, CEO, Sphere Fluidics. “Following funding, we’re now excited to get started on the project and initiate the collaboration amongst consortium members, which will be key to 3DSecret’s hopeful breakthrough. Through our involvement, we are further demonstrating the scope of applications our technology can support to facilitate cutting-edge biotherapeutic discovery and development.”

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