ICE-METs · Interstitium-on-a-chip to explore its role in cancer metastasis

The annual number of metastatic cancer deaths and the cost of cancer treatment makes cancer research a priority for the European Union. One of the key factors in metastatic cancer is the ability of the cancer cells to migrate from a primary tumor to the blood vessels and lymphatics. A better understanding of how cancer cells interact with the microenvironment and migrate from blood vessels to the lymphatics to create distant metastases, is key for discovering efficient chemotherapy drugs that will cover the growing needs of the worldwide population. The possibility of developing biomimetic engineered devices to understand metastasis proliferation and testing of drugs is a crucial goal for the research community, both in science and medicine, translating to major benefits for future patients. Therefore, the goal of the ICE-METs project is to deliver, a novel engineered microfluidic biomimetic platform to monitor the migration and proliferation of cancer cells in metastasis.