Fig. 6: Effect of stroma depletion in chemotherapeutic response.
From: Patient-derived pancreatic cancer-on-a-chip recapitulates the tumor microenvironment
To show the utility of the multicellular PDO-based organ-chip system for drug screening, stroma-depleting agents were used along with gemcitabine. The IC50 values of a Clodrosome® (liposomal clodronate) and d ATRA were measured in U937 cells and PSCs, respectively, using a CCK8 assay. b, c, e, f The IC50 values of the drugs were confirmed to be noncytotoxic to the PCCs and MIA PaCa-2 cells, as observed in the viability assay. g PDOs and stromal cells were grown on the organ-chip device for 6 days, followed by drug perfusion for 3 days. Immunofluorescence staining demonstrated the augmented effect of gemcitabine in combination with stroma-depleting agents compared with gemcitabine alone. ImageJ® software was used to calculate the intensity of cleaved caspase-3 (C.Cas-3, red) in EpCAM (green)-positive cells. Scale bar, 50 µm. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001
