Researchers from the Wyss Institute have developed a hydrogel microenvironment to evaluate how physical properties like stiffness of the extracellular matrix impacts the efficacy of chemotherapy.
“To have success with chemotherapy and other drug therapies, we will likely need to screen their effectiveness against cells living in various environments, and not just assume that cells will always respond to a drug the same way that they would in conventional cell culture,” senior author David Mooney said in prepared remarks.
The study, published yesterday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes a drug screen assay using alginate hydrogels that were tuned to recapitulate stiffness and other properties characteristic of tumors and healthy tissue. Cancer cells were loaded into the hydrogel and bombarded with chemotherapy, according to the study, and researchers evaluated the drug’s efficacy based on the level of resistance the cells build up.
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