Over the past six decades the inflation-adjusted cost to bring a new drug to market has been increasing constantly and doubles every 9 years – now reaching in excess of $2.5 billion. Overall, the likelihood of FDA approval for a drug (any disease indication) that has entered phase I clinical trials is a mere 9.6%, with the approval rate for oncology far below average at only 5.1%. Lack of efficacy or toxicity is often not revealed until the later stages of clinical trials, despite promising preclinical data. This indicates that the current in vitro systems for drug screening need to be improved for better predictability of in vivo outcomes. Microphysiological systems (MPS), or bioengineered 3D microfluidic tissue and organ constructs that mimic physiological and pathological processes in vitro, can be leveraged across preclinical research and clinical trial stages to transform drug development and clinical management for a range of diseases. Here we review the current state-of-the-art in 3D tissue-engineering models developed for cancer research, with a focus on tumor-on-a-chip, or tumor chip, models. From our viewpoint, tumor chip systems can advance innovative medicine to ameliorate the high failure rates in anti-cancer drug development and clinical treatment.

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肿瘤芯片技术的应用

过去 60 年来，将新药推向市场的经通胀调整的成本不断增加，每 9 年翻一番，目前已超过 25 亿美元。总体而言，进入 I 期临床试验的药物（任何疾病适应症）获得 FDA 批准的可能性仅为 9.6%，其中肿瘤学的批准率远低于平均水平，仅为 5.1%。尽管临床前数据很有希望，但疗效或毒性的缺乏往往要到临床试验的后期才会被发现。这表明当前的体外药物筛选系统需要改进，以便更好地预测体内结果。微生理系统 (MPS) 或模拟体外生理和病理过程的生物工程 3D 微流体组织和器官结构，可以在临床前研究和临床试验阶段利用，以改变一系列疾病的药物开发和临床管理。在这里，我们回顾了为癌症研究开发的 3D 组织工程模型的最新技术，重点关注芯片上肿瘤或肿瘤芯片模型。我们认为，肿瘤芯片系统可以推进创新医学，改善抗癌药物开发和临床治疗的高失败率。