Functionalizing the Tumor Microenvironment with Microfluidics for Anti-cancer Drug Development

Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide. The complex and disorganized tumor microenvironment makes it very difficult to treat this disease. The most common in vitro drug screening method now is based on 2D culture which poorly represents actual tumors. Therefore, many 3D tumor models which are more physiologically relevant, have been developed to conduct in vitro drug screening and alleviate this situation. Among all these methods, microfluidic tumor model has the unique advantage of recapitulating tumor microenvironment in a comparatively easier and representative fashion. While there are many review papers available on the related topic of microfluidic tumor model, in this review we aim to focus more on the possibility of generating “clinically actionable information” from these microfluidic systems, besides scientific insight. Our topics cover the tumor microenvironment, conventional 2D and 3D cultures, animal model, and microfluidic tumor model, emphasizing their link to anti-cancer drug discovery and personalized medicine. We hope it can guide new researchers into this area to find their direction as well as showcase recent progress to readers of interest.