TumorGen is developing the tools necessary - a novel drug discovery platform - to enable development of new drugs specifically to target metastases: a versatile microfluidic platform pioneering drug discovery against circulating tumor cell clusters, the drivers of metastasis. Metastatic cancer cell clusters (MCCCs) are understood to be the primary vector for disseminating distant metastases in most solid tumor cancers. Tumorgen's innovative platform could open an entirely new therapeutic target space for biopharma developing drugs directly yo impact the pathways of cancer metastasis.The approach is to develop and validate a microfluidic system that captures metastatic cell clusters from whole blood. The larger purpose of this is to expedite the discovery of new cluster-targeted drugs, which - if correct - could represent a major paradigm shift in cancer treatment. Development of this system includes coating microfluidic chips, using robotics for process automation, conducting biological experiments, and troubleshooting at different steps along the way.
