Fig. 4

Modelling systemic metastasis in a body-on-chip An illustration is provided to represent the metastatic progression in the future using a human body-on-chip consisting of multiple fluidically connected organs-on-chips, which are often referred to as organ chips, such as the liver, brain, lung, and bone chips. On this body-on-chip, arrows indicate blood circulation, showing lung cancer cells growing on a lung cancer chip invading the vascular channel. Then cancer cells spread to the other chips, owing to fluid connections and pumping of the same medium to multiple chips. This is similar to how blood is pumped from the heart to every other organ in the body. The progression of metastatic lesions could be monitored by observing lung cancer cells with fluorescent markers penetrating the circulation of fluid. These markers could be inserted into the liver, bone, or brain chips from afar. Metastasizing lesions typically occur at these sites where studies could be conducted to identify and study the growth of metastatic cancer cells. By using this method, it would be possible to determine the mechanisms by which tumour cells attack particular organs (organotropism) and also recognize possible pharmacological approaches to inhibit metastatic cancer cells spread