Organs-on-a-chip: novel heart-breast cancer chip developed to monitor chemotherapy toxicity

A research team from Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation (CA, USA) has developed an organs-on-a-chip system to improve monitoring of heart tissues and breast cancer cells in response to chemotherapeutic breast cancer drugs. The system measures one biomarker that is produced by actively growing breast cancer cells and two cardiac biomarkers that are produced by healthy heart cells. To mirror the possible heart conditions of people with breast cancer prior to chemotherapy, the tests included both healthy and artificially-induced damaged heart tissues. The chip, described in Small, was designed to have two separate compartments for tissues cultures: one for breast...