Bone marrow microenvironment and organ chips: Advances in tumor dormancy research

Abstract

Bone metastasis presents a major challenge in oncology, often involving prolonged tumor dormancy within the complex bone marrow microenvironment (BMME). This dormancy, characterized by halted proliferation but sustained viability, poses risks for late recurrence and therapy resistance. Recent advancements in bone marrow-on-a-chip (BMOC) technology provide highly controllable, physiologically relevant biomimetic platforms to model the intricate cellular and molecular interactions governing BMME-regulated dormancy. This review focuses on BMOC-based approaches, examining their principles, distinct advantages, applications, and key findings in elucidating mechanisms of tumor dormancy regulation. Critically, it addresses current technical and biological limitations of BMOCs (e.g., replicating full immune component complexity) and propose concrete future directions for enhancing BMOC development and integration with complementary technologies. Enhanced understanding through refined BMOC technology could Fundamentally uncover dormancy mechanisms and advance novel therapeutic strategies for metastatic control.

Keywords

Bone marrow microenvironment / Organ-on-a-chip / Microfluidics / Tumor dormancy / Organoid

Acknowledgments

None.

Funding

We are grateful for the support from the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2023A1515011544) and the National Science Foundation of China (32101097).

Conflict of interest

Zhidao Xia is an Associate Editor of this journal, but was not in any way involved in the Editorial and peer-review process conducted for this paper, directly or indirectly. Separately, other authors declared that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper.

Author contributions

Conceptualization: Renshan Li, Xiongfa Ji, Jin Ke

Visualization: Renshan Li, Jiaqi Zhou

Writing-original draft: Renshan Li

Writing-review & editing: Jiaqi Zhou, Man Shu, Guoqing Zhong, Zhidao Xia

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Availability of data

Not applicable.

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