Two patients share the same diagnosis and the same genetic markers, yet one responds to treatment and one does not — a mystery that has long haunted glioblastoma care. Researchers at KAIST and collaborating institutions in South Korea have built a microfluidic chip that recreates a patient's own tumor environment in miniature, revealing how the physical architecture of the blood-brain tumor barrier shapes drug delivery in ways no genetic test can see. In early trials, the chip's predictions aligned with actual patient outcomes, suggesting that the invisible landscape of individual disease may,
Korean researchers develop microfluidic chip to predict personalized glioblastoma treatment responses
Glioblastoma patients currently face unpredictable treatment outcomes due to inability to assess individual vascular barrier variations, potentially leading to ineffective therapy and disease progression.