Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University have been awarded $3.5 million in federal funding to study the interactions of oral cancer with bone using advanced organ-on-a-chip models.
Principal investigator Luiz Bertassoni, D.D.S., Ph.D., will lead a team developing a new "tumor-bone interface on-a-chip" to better study how a specific type of oral cancer spreads and destroys bone.
Head and neck cancer is one of the most common cancers in the world, with about 600,000 new cases each year, according to the World Health Organization. One specific type — oral squamous cell carcinoma — is especially concerning because it often spreads aggressively from cells in the tongue, lips and gums into nearby bone, making it harder to treat.
To better understand how oral squamous cell carcinoma spreads and destroys bone, researchers need reliable laboratory models that mimic what happens in the human body. However, existing models don't accurately capture the complex environment where bone and tumor cells interact, which has made progress difficult.
Bertassoni, founding director of the Knight Cancer Precision Biofabrication Hub and a professor in the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute and the OHSU School of Dentistry, and his team was awarded the grant in June from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research of the National Institutes of Health.
Bertassoni will lead the project with colleagues at OHSU's Knight Biofabrication Hub and the School of Dentistry.
Almost a decade ago, Bertassoni and his team developed a method to 3D-print blood vessels in the lab. Since then, they've focused on engineering blood vessels that better mimic those in the human body to study more complex diseases.
Traditional lab models have failed to accurately replicate the complex bone-tumor environment, hampering progress. Bertassoni's new chip-based system mimics key components of the bone environment, including mineral matrix, osteoblasts, osteoclasts and blood vessels. This enables the team to leverage technologies that it previously developed and offers a more realistic and powerful tool for cancer research.
The Food and Drug Administration has recently prioritized methods that use human cells, rather than animal models, in advanced in-vitro laboratory models such as human organs-on-a-chip.
Researchers hope that advanced models using human cells in-vitro, such as the ones developed by Bertassoni and his team at the Knight Cancer Precision Biofabrication Hub, can accelerate the development and approval of new treatments for people.
"What makes our system unique is that it can be easily adjusted — researchers can add or remove different cell types or materials to study how each part affects cancer growth," Bertassoni said. "This funding allows us to investigate exactly how, why and when oral squamous cell carcinoma spreads into bone and which factors drive that process.
"With that, we can develop new therapies and even test cells from individual patients to check which ones are more likely to spread, which is a powerful way of determining risk of more serious disease before tumors begin to spread and grow."
This research is supported by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, of the National Institutes of Health, under award number R01DE035326. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.
