MICRONEX aimed to address the limitations of standard laboratory practices in studying cancer, particularly Neuroblastoma (NB), a pediatric tumor. The project focused on developing advanced microscale technologies to better mimic the complex tumor microenvironment and understand the role of extracellular vesicles (EVs) in tumor progression.
NB is the most common malignancy in early childhood; it is characterized by high biological heterogeneity, variable prognosis, and high tendency to metastasize. There are many unanswered questions and poorly understood phenomena around the mechanisms of EVs-mediated tumor communication and tumor progression, and we believe that the use of advanced technologies might be key in providing novel insights. The technological advances we sought to develop are defined microbioreactors (μBRs), small devices that exploit classical engineering principles for biomedical purposes.
Throughout the project, we developed devices specifically designed to respond to each biological question we posed. For example, we produced μBRs capable of generating time and space-resolved concentration gradients, support fast dynamic changes and reconstruct complex interactions between cells and tissues while performing multifactorial and parallelized experiments.
We are confident that our technological approach could be adapted and extended not only to studies of other types of human cancer, but also to several other biomedical applications.
The overarching goal of bridging the gap between in vitro techniques and in vivo biological phenomena, would undoubtedly help the scientific community in developing ever improving diagnostic tool and therapeutic protocols, ultimately greatly benefiting global health.
