Project description
An organ-on-a-chip platform for studying bone metastases
Organs-on-a-chip constitute a significant advancement in biomedical research for studying organ function, disease and therapy response. Their design is aimed at replicating the cellular, mechanical and biochemical properties of a specific organ more accurately than traditional 2D cell cultures. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the SYNOPSIS project aims to develop an organ-on-a-chip to model the bone perivascular niche, where breast and prostate cancer cells frequently metastasise. The device will capture the mechanical and electrical properties of cancer cells as well as mimic fluid shear stress. Applications of the SYNOPSIS model include high-throughput screening of therapies and support of personalised anti-metastatic treatments.
Objective
Cancer is currently the second cause of death worldwide; however, the World Health Organization expects it to become the first one by 2060. Breast and Prostate Cancers (BC and PC) are highly aggressive tumours linked to top cancer-related mortality rates in the world, with the skeletal tissue as one of the primary sites of metastasis.
This project, called SYNOPSIS, an acronym for “SYNergic multimodal platform for high-throughput anti-cancer bOne-metastases theraPy ScreenIngS”, aims at studying therapeutic agents against BC and PC in the perivascular niche around the bone-tissue within a lab-on-chip, with a multimodal approach involving time-lapse microscopy (TLM) and impedance optical-deformability cytometry (IODC).
The proposed project is divided into four key phases:
1. Organ-on-chip platform: design, fabrication, and testing of the microphysiological system (MPS), including the culturing of bone and cancer cells under fluid shear stress conditions and the administration of chemotherapeutic agents.
2. IODC: design, fabrication, and testing of the module.
3. Data acquisition: TLM videos of the cells in the MPS and IODC measurements.
4. Data Analysis: optimise processing strategies for TLM and IODC data to leverage the various signals available for evaluating therapy efficacy.
The action will bring: (1) a new MPS, mimicking cancer in the bone perivascular niche, overcoming literature’s limitations; (2) a novel IODC platform probing cell’s electro-mechanical features; (3) a first-time combination of TLM and IODC measurements in MPS. The principal objective of this action will be the realization of a multimodal platform for anti-cancer bone-metastases drug-efficacy evaluation (4), combining TLM video, IODC with a minimum of 10^3 cells/s, and data analysis reaching 95% accuracy on test data coming from independent experiments, providing the user with the rationale of the decision process, finally decreasing cancer-related mortality.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences sociology demography mortality
- engineering and technology other engineering and technologies microtechnology lab on a chip
- natural sciences physical sciences optics microscopy
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine oncology
- engineering and technology other engineering and technologies microtechnology organ on a chip
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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00133 Roma
Italy
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