# Implant a tiny device that tests twenty drugs inside the patient's own tumour

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-bio2-implantable-microdevice-screen/  
OnCo record `idea-bio2-implantable-microdevice-screen` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

A rice-grain-sized implant releases microdoses of up to 20 drugs into separate spots of a tumour for one to three days, then is removed so pathologists can see which drug worked in that person's own tumour. First-in-human studies have been done in breast, sarcoma and brain tumours.

## Summary

Implantable microdevices developed at MIT and Brigham and Women's Hospital deliver microdoses of up to 20 agents into spatially separated tumour regions for 24-72 hours before retrieval and analysis, and first-in-human studies have been performed in breast, sarcoma and brain tumours. Applied to immune-modulating agents, the device measures local pharmacodynamics in the real human microenvironment, which no model reproduces.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Microdevice-derived local response ranking predicts subsequent systemic response to the same agent, giving a functional assay for immunotherapy combinations that tissue genomics cannot provide.
- Rationale: The core problem in combination immunotherapy is a combinatorial space far larger than trial capacity. In-patient microdosing tests many agents per patient rather than one, converting an intractable search into a measurable screen.
- Proposed test: Prospective study in patients scheduled for resection: implant, retrieve, profile, then follow subsequent systemic therapy outcomes to test the concordance between local ranking and clinical response.
- Maturity: early-clinical
- Actor: engineering

## Sources

- Bottleneck evidence (Cold tumours and the immunosuppressive microenvironment): Haslam & Prasad, Estimation of the percentage of US patients eligible for and responding to checkpoint inhibitors (JAMA Netw Open 2019): https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.2535

## Connected records

- cancers: [Glioma & glioblastoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/glioblastoma/), [Sarcomas (soft tissue, bone, GIST)](https://onco.cc/cancers/sarcoma/), [Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC)](https://onco.cc/cancers/tnbc/)
- technologies: [Functional (ex vivo) drug testing](https://onco.cc/technologies/functional-drug-testing/), [Immune checkpoint inhibitors](https://onco.cc/technologies/checkpoint-inhibitor/), [Single-cell & spatial profiling](https://onco.cc/technologies/single-cell-spatial/)
- institutions: [Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/dana-farber/), [Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/mgh/)
- bottlenecks: [Cold tumours and the immunosuppressive microenvironment](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-tme-immunosuppression/), [Lab models that fail to predict what happens in patients](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-preclinical-models/), [Too many combinations to test](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-combination-space/)
- key papers: [Estimation of the Percentage of US Patients With Cancer Who Are Eligible for and Respond to Checkpoint Inhibitor Immunotherapy Drugs](https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-haslam-jama-netw-open/)

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