Fabricating Validation Phantoms For Developing Tumor Therapies

Cancerous tumors historically have been treated with chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, and other methods. Certain cancers such as recurrent glioblastoma (rGBM) in the brain are extremely aggressive and become treatment resistant after recurrence. Thus, traditional treatment methods are not effective and alternative methods are required. Thermal/energy delivery methods to local cancer regions are being developed to maximize cancer cell damage and minimize healthy cell damage. However, these methods need to be validated for efficacy. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released the New Approach Methods (NAMs) to phase out animal testing and transition to more effective methods like anthropomorphic phantoms. This work aims to fabricate human brain phantoms to have similar mechanical properties to the human anatomy. Computer Aided Design (CAD) modelling and Additive Manufacturing (AM) are used to generate negative molds of the brain phantom, which are then filled with ballistic gel that serves as the brain tissue and tumor mimicking material. The phantoms are then subjected to mechanical testing to evaluate their similarity to the mechanical properties of healthy brain and tumor tissue; if necessary, the ballistic gelatin will be modified to have adjusted mechanical property values.