We describe the first microfluidic device for in vitro testing of brachytherapy (BT), with applications in translational cancer research. Our PDMS-made BT-on-chip system allows highly precise manual insertion of clinical BT seeds, reliable dose calculation using standard clinically-used TG-43 formalism and easy culture of naturally hypoxic spheroids in less than 3 days, thereby increasing the translational potential of the device. As the BT-on-chip platform is designed to be versatile, we showcase three different gold-standard post-irradiation bioassays and recapitulate, for the first time on-chip, key clinical observations such as dose rate effect and hypoxia-induced radioresistance. Our results suggest that BT-on-chip can be used to safely and efficiently integrate BT and radiotherapy to translational research and drug development pipelines, without expensive equipment or complex workflows.

中文翻译：

---

芯片上近距离放射治疗：3D 生物学中放射治疗测试的临床相关方法

我们描述了第一个用于近距离放射治疗 (BT)体外测试的微流体装置，并在转化癌症研究中得到应用。我们的 PDMS 制造的 BT-on-chip 系统允许高精度手动插入临床 BT 种子，使用标准临床使用的 TG-43 形式进行可靠的剂量计算，并在不到 3 天内轻松培养自然缺氧球体，从而提高转化潜力设备的。由于 BT 芯片平台被设计为多功能的，我们展示了三种不同的金标准辐照后生物测定，并首次在芯片上概括了关键的临床观察结果，例如剂量率效应和缺氧引起的放射抗性。我们的研究结果表明，BT-on-chip 可用于安全有效地将 BT 和放射治疗整合到转化研究和药物开发流程中，而无需昂贵的设备或复杂的工作流程。