Therapeutic and Side Effects Modeling of Electrolytic Cancer Ablation Therapy Using Organ-on-a-Chip

Minimal invasive ablation therapy is an emerging treatment that enables locoregional tumor removal. One promising modality is electrolytic ablation therapy which induces cell death through local delivery of low-energy direct current. However, the realization of electrolytic ablation in the clinic has hampered by not-well-defined efficacy and mechanism. In this paper, we introduce a Multi-Organoid-on-a-Chip (MOC) that enables the modeling of electrolytic ablation therapy. The evaluated efficacy of electrolytic ablation on pancreatic cancer organoids revealed a 0.14 %/min cell death, while the side effects on neighboring, normal liver organoids inflicted minimal cell death (0.001 %/min). The in vitro results demonstrate a mechanism of the cell death is mainly due to locoregional pH change, and side effects due to byproducts of the electrochemical reaction are minimal.