# A novel microfluidic device to predict brain cancer prognosis and response to therapy

> **NIH NIH R01** · MAYO CLINIC  JACKSONVILLE · 2021 · $474,770

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Brain tumor is the leading cause of solid tumor death in children and one of the top leading causes of cancer
death in young male and female adults with ages of 20-39
. Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common primary
brain cancer in adults with an overall incidence of 20% of all primary brain tumors. Despite current standard of
care, which includes surgery and chemo-radiation, the median survival is only 14.6 months. Due to the highly
invasive nature of GBM cells, standard treatment with gross total resection of the tumor is insufficient to
achieve a cure because of the high rate of recurrence by tumor cells outside the tumor resection margins.
Moreover, there is an unmet need in the ability of clinicians to identify patients with lower survival times and
high risk of recurrence. Developing novel prognostic tools for determining patient survival and for identifying
cell subpopulations that have a significantly increased motility and aggressiveness, and drive recurrence is of
utmost importance. Intriguing data based on a retrospective study of our GBM patients reveal that: 1) our novel
Microfluidic Invasion Network Device (MIND) predicts survival in GBM patients based on the increased
percentage of invasive cells in the heterogeneous population; 2) we are able to separate the invasive from
non-invasive cell using MIND device, which will allow us to understand the underlying molecular differences of
the more aggressive subpopulations; 3) the targetable transcription factor TEAD4 is selectively overexpressed
and hyperactive in GBM and promotes confined GBM migration. In light of these findings, we propose to: i)
establish our MIND platform as an adjunct tool to the clinical management of GBM patients prospectively, ii)
uncover novel drivers of GBM cell invasion, and iii) utilize it as a high-throughput assay for screening potential
therapeutic drugs. To achieve these goals, we will pursue the following specific aims: to determine the
prognostic power of confined space migration in a prospective cohort of GBM patients using MIND (Aim 1); to
characterize the molecular drivers of confined space migration of phenotypically aggressive brain cancer cells
using MIND (Aim 2); to evaluate the in vivo translational efficacy of 42 chemotherapeutic agents tested in
MIND (Aim 3). In vitro experiments will be conducted using prospectively collected patient-derived primary
GBM cell lines from over 100 patients. Our proprietary and novel MIND platform will be used to study confined-
space migration from these patients to identify poor prognosis and high recurrence prospectively with the
future goal of achieving personalized treatments for patients. In vivo studies will be conducted using our
established orthotopic human brain tumor initiating cell-derived GBM model in mice. The results obtained from
this study will to lead to the development of a platform for precision medicine with the ability to test drugs in a
high throughput fashion using...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10090576
- **Project number:** 5R01CA216855-04
- **Recipient organization:** MAYO CLINIC  JACKSONVILLE
- **Principal Investigator:** Konstantinos Konstantopoulos
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $474,770
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-02-14 → 2023-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10090576

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10090576, A novel microfluidic device to predict brain cancer prognosis and response to therapy (5R01CA216855-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10090576. Licensed CC0.

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