Luis Solorio, assistant professor at the Purdue Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, receives ASPIRE Award.

Metastatic disease is the most common cause of death in patients with breast cancer. After the cancer has spread to other areas of the body, no clear guidelines exist to inform therapeutic decisions. Novel technologies that enable personalized treatment choices are needed.

Solorio has developed a 3D-printed matrix that enables the growth and study of metastatic breast cancer cells. The team will conduct a one-year drug study on 100 patient samples to screen for the drugs the patients received during the course of their treatment and to identify the response the cancerous cells had to the compounds—whether the drugs worked or failed to treat the cancerous cells.

The goal of this project is to determine whether ex vivo treatment response is predictive of treatment response in patients. Toward this goal, the team will use this novel platform for drug intervention studies on breast cancers that have metastasized to the pleural cavity. If successful, the platform would provide clinicians with an evidence-based treatment selection approach.

The Mark Foundation’s ASPIRE (Accelerating Scientific Platforms and Innovative Research) program funds high risk, high reward approaches to solving complex problems in cancer research that tend to fall outside the scope of other funding opportunities. The projects are short-term and designed to answer key proof-of-concept questions.

Related:

The Mark Foundation Funds Fourteen New Cancer Innovation Projects
Tumor MicroEnvironment & Therapeutics Lab (TMET)
Netherlands Cancer Institute and Oncode Institute