Cancer metastasis is a multi-step, secondary tumor formation that is responsible for the vast majority of deaths in cancer patients. Animal models have served as one of the major tools for studying metastatic diseases. However, these metastasis models inherently lack the ability to decouple many of the key parameters that might contribute to cancer progression, and therefore ultimately limit detailed, mechanistic investigation of metastasis. Recently, organ-on-a-chip model systems have been developed for various tissue types with the potential to recapitulate major components of metastasis. Here, we discuss recent advances in in vitro biomimetic on-a-chip models for cancer metastasis.

中文翻译：

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仿生芯片平台，用于研究癌症转移。

癌症转移是多步骤的继发性肿瘤形成，其导致癌症患者的绝大多数死亡。动物模型已成为研究转移性疾病的主要工具之一。然而，这些转移模型固有地缺乏将可能促成癌症进展的许多关键参数解耦的能力，因此最终限制了转移的详细的机械研究。近来，已经开发了用于各种组织类型的芯片上器官模型系统，其具有概括转移的主要成分的潜力。在这里，我们讨论了体外仿生芯片模型对癌症转移的最新进展。