SBIR Phase I:Personalized Cancer Screening

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to increase the success rates of cancer therapy, reduce the costs and duration of treatment, and to improve patients’ life quality. More than 70% of the 16 million Americans diagnosed with cancer will undergo ineffective chemotherapy cycles through trial-and-error methods. On average, a cycle of chemotherapy costs $30 k and takes 12 weeks to complete; cancer patients undergo 5-6 cycles at a cost of an estimated $180 k. This project advances a method to pre-screen response to chemotherapy drugs so that clinicians can select the most effective treatment, consequently shortening the duration, reducing complications, improving outcomes, and reducing the financial burden. The technology uses a quick, single-step, scalable, inexpensive, and automated process that tests a wide range of drugs in less than a week. With this technology, the oncologist will be able to select the most effective chemotherapy drug for a cancer patient, on an individualized basis and prior to initiating treatment. The proposed personalized approach would reduce the number of chemotherapy cycles to 1-2, and save up to $120 k per treatment, generating annual national savings of $18.2 B.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project supports the development, proof-of-concept validation, and preclinical evaluation of an automated biochip platform that grows patients’ cancer cells outside the body to screen them against chemotherapeutic drugs. In the research described herein, tumor specimens from patient biopsies will be grown and maintained as microtumors in the biochips to recapitulate clinical tumor behavior. The biochips and process will be optimized to create microtumors that can be used toward evaluating the performance of cancer treatment. Research objectives are to I) evaluate, refine, and optimize the design of the biochips through simulation studies to ensure compatibility with native tumor microstructure and mass transfer behavior; II) evaluate the formation, growth, and behavior of patient-derived microtumors in the biochips; and III) investigate the response of patient-derived microtumors to anti-cancer drugs in comparison to longitudinal clinical data.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.