
Title
VASTO: VAScularized Tumor Organoids on a chip with human placenta vessels as a preclinical model for anticancer therapies.
Description
Vasto aims to develop a VAScularized Tumor Organoids on a chip with human placenta vessels as a preclinical model for anticancer therapies. This human ex vivo platform will launch a new product to the market very attractive for clinical labs and companies, reducing animal experiments and providing a more reliable alternative for testing different therapies against tumors and approaching a more personalized patient-like model.
Objectives and Results
VASTO Proof of Concept aims to develop and test an innovative microfluidic-based platform, which allows to evaluate the efficacy of different cell immunotherapy strategies against solid tumors. For this aim, we propose to microfabricate 3D solid tumor organoids with an aberrant microvascular network provided from the explant of human vessels. Although there are other different vessel-on-a-chip and/or microvascular network formation approaches that use in vitro cell monolayers, we are not aware of any solution covering human ex vivo blood vessel platform as it is proposed here. Therefore, we aim to recreate the existing mechano-chemical barriers characteristics of the tumor microenvironment in solid tumors with this novel ex vivo platform.
With this technology, we can define a method to evaluate the efficacy of different immunotherapy-based strategies. Specifically, we focus on studying the effectivity of different Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR)-T cell therapies in solid tumors. Hence, the development of VASTO harbors the interest of CAR-T manufacturers to test these cell therapies against solid tumors. We will be able to assess CAR-T cell vascular extravasation, penetration into solid tumors and the CAR-T efficiency for tumor elimination.
In addition to its applicability to liver cancer, the acquired knowledge in VASTO could also be extrapolated to any other kind of tumors, but also in the development of an ex vivo platform for research in regenerative processes, by incorporating organoids from healthy donors, instead of malignant cells, and promoting functional vasculature, instead of aberrant one.
IP IIS Aragon
Peter the Baptist
Financing Agency
Horizon Europe - European Research Council (ERC)
Total Project Budget: €150.000
IISA financing: €20.000
Coordinator
University of Zaragoza, Spain (IP: José Manuel García Aznar)
Be a partner
- Aragón Health Research Institute Foundation (IIS Aragón)
Duration
01/11/2023 – 30/04/2025 (18 months)