Bone Marrow-on-Chip as smart sensor of lung cancer relapse

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In the past 40 years the overall survival rate for people affected by tumors has doubled, with about 50% of patients now surviving their disease for 10 years or more. Nonetheless, some cancers (e.g lung cancer) still have poor survival rate. A major cause of lung cancer mortality is represented by disease relapse, occuring when few of the original cancer cells survive the initial treatment and causing primary tumor recurrence. Currently, no options are available to predict the risk of lung cancer relapse, which is only diagnosed late based on radiological evidence. Hence, the ability to early detect lung cancer relapse represents an urgent and unmet need, since a fast and tailored treatment could dramatically increase patients’ survival rate. BuonMarrow lays on the groundbreaking hypothesis, supported by our Consortium preliminary clinical evidence, that bone marrow mesenchymal stromal cells (BM-MSC) may be educated upon cancer mediators exposure, and acquire a long-term memory-like response which is amplified when exposed to a secondary tumor. Owing to breakthrough technologies available in the Consortium (organ-on-chip, innovative optical sensors and biological modeling of the bone marrow niche), BuonMarrow partners will develop an in vitro miniaturized bone marrow device able to harness the amplified BM-MSC response generated by liquid biopsy of lung cancer patients, thus acting as a biological sensor for the early detection of relapse. A combination of retrospective and prospective clinical studies, respectively, will allow to calibrate and validate such sensor, delivering an unprecedented tool to assist the decision-making process on lung cancer patients. We expect to significantly improve oncological treatments, building on a personalized medicine approach to increased patient survival and well-being, and thereby deeply impacting on EU’s socio/economic environment.