PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Stephanie J. Hachey
AU  - Silva Movsesyan
AU  - Quy H. Nguyen
AU  - Giselle Burton-Sojo
AU  - Ani Tankanzyan
AU  - Jie Wu
AU  - Tuyen Hoang
AU  - Michaela M. Hatch
AU  - Da Zhao
AU  - Elizabeth Celaya
AU  - Samantha Gomez
AU  - George T. Chen
AU  - Ryan T. Davis
AU  - Kevin Nee
AU  - Nicholas Pervolarakis
AU  - Devon A. Lawson
AU  - Kai Kessenbrock
AU  - Abraham P. Lee
AU  - Marian L. Waterman
AU  - Christopher C.W. Hughes
TI  - An <em>In Vitro</em> Vascularized Micro-Tumor Model of Human Colorectal Cancer Recapitulates <em>In Vivo</em> Drug Responses
AID  - 10.1101/2020.03.03.973891
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.03.03.973891
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/05/2020.03.03.973891.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/05/2020.03.03.973891.full
AB  - Around 95% of anti-cancer drugs that show promise during preclinical study fail to gain FDA-approval for clinical use. This failure of the preclinical pipeline highlights the need for improved, physiologically-relevant in vitro models that can better serve as reliable drug-screening tools. The vascularized micro-tumor (VMT) is a novel three-dimensional model system that recapitulates the complex human tumor microenvironment, including perfused vasculature, within a transparent microfluidic device, allowing real-time study of drug responses and tumor-stromal interactions. Here we have validated the VMT platform for the study of colorectal cancer (CRC), the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths, by showing that gene expression, tumor heterogeneity, and treatment response in the VMT more closely model CRC tumor clinicopathology than current standard drug screening modalities, including 2-dimensional (2D) monolayer culture and 3-dimensional (3D) spheroids.