# Development of microfluidic blood-brain tumor barrier model to screen chemotherapeutic strategies for breast cancer brain metastases

> **NIH NIH K25** · STANFORD UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $157,167

## Abstract

Project Summary
Brain metastasis, the distant relapse of a cancer in brain originally from another organ, occurs in 30% of breast
cancer patients and is one of the leading causes of their mortality rate. A major barrier for understanding and
treating brain metastasis is the complexity of the microenvironment around the brain blood vessel which plays
critical roles in metastatic progression, delivery and efficacy of chemotherapeutic drugs, and the side effects of
chemotherapy. In addition, breast cancer shows distinct therapeutic responses and disease progression
across individual patients and thus the clinical analysis and evaluation of the treatment options require much
larger randomized samples of patients with long-term clinical history. However, animal models, the most
commonly used platform for screening cancer treatment strategies, have the inherent limitation in efficiency for
testing the vast number of possible drug combinations, setting aside the controversy on the degree of their
clinical relevance to the human diseases. In this project, we aim to develop a reliable, clinically relevant in vitro
experimental model of breast cancer brain metastasis for efficient screening of chemotherapy drugs. More
specifically, we will reconstruct the complex microenvironment around the brain blood vessel within a hydrogel-
containing microfluidic chip, complete with its 3D cellular network and the surrounding bloodstream simulated
with microfluidics technology. The clinical relevance of this artificial yet native-like brain blood vessel
environment will be confirmed through the breast cancer cells behaviors akin to the clinical data in terms of the
response to anti-cancer agents. Our breast cancer brain metastasis model will be a time- and cost-efficient test
bed for screening and identifying the optimal treatment choice for each patient as well as for predicting and
preventing the risk of brain metastasis development in individual patients. The highly promising, new
chemotherapeutic targets identified from this project will lead to preclinical studies in which our model can
further serve as an effective experimental platform. Furthermore, by incorporating individual patients’ cells into
our in vitro system, we will eventually be able to build patient-specific models, opening up a possibility of truly
customized treatment for each patient.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9828081
- **Project number:** 5K25CA201545-04
- **Recipient organization:** STANFORD UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Wonjae Lee
- **Activity code:** K25 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $157,167
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-01-01 → 2021-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9828081

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9828081, Development of microfluidic blood-brain tumor barrier model to screen chemotherapeutic strategies for breast cancer brain metastases (5K25CA201545-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9828081. Licensed CC0.

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