Chip guides brain treatment

Patient-specific ‘blood–brain tumor barrier chip’ predicts how glioblastoma patients will respond to treatment

August 18, 2026
10:49 pm

During cancer treatment, the same brain tumor can be treated with the same anticancer drug, but the effect can differ from patient to patient. A Korean research team has developed a chip that recreates a patient's own tumor cells together with the surrounding peritumoral vascular environment, making it possible to predict patient-specific treatment responses in advance.

The team, led by Professor Song Ih Ahn from KAIST’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, in collaboration with Professor Jungho Ahn’s team at Sungkyunkwan University, Professor Jaejoon Lim of CHA Bundang Medical Center and Professor Youn-Jung Kang’s team at CHA University, has developed a patient-specific blood–brain tumor barrier (BBTB) chip capable of predicting treatment responses in glioblastoma patients.

The results were published in Small.

Patient-specific ‘blood–brain tumor barrier chip’ predicts how glioblastoma patients will respond to treatment

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