RECENT ADVANCES IN RESEARCHING CANCER TYPES USING 3D BIOPRINTING
Three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting is the use of rapid prototyping technologies to print cells, growth factors, and other bio-materials layer by layer to produce biomedical components that can maximally mimic the properties of natural tissues/organs.
Applications of 3D Bioprinting;
• Organ Printing
• Tissue Printing
• Drug Screening
• Tissue Regeneration
• Persenalized Medicine
• Persenalized Implants
• Toxicity Studies
Despite thousands of cancer researches, millions of cancer-related deaths occur worldwide. Although chemotherapy is still considered the gold standard in the vast majority of cancers, response to treatment varies from patient to patient. Therefore, it is an urgent necessity for the "one-size-fits-all" treatment approach to be replaced by personalized medicine with the developing technology.
Tumor heterogeneity, stemness, and cancer cell plasticity require multi-drug trials, including targeted therapeutic agents. Unfortunately, it is difficult to mimic the properties of cancer cells (cell-cell adhesion, cell migration, mechanotransduction, and signaling of cells within the tumor tissue) in a 2D cell culture model.
Fortunately, recent advances show that tumors can be successfully grown in a 3D microenvironment/extracellular matrix.
These 3D models;
• Multicellular tumor spheroid model
• Multilayer cell cultures
• Organotypic sections of cancer tissues and
• Cell-seeded scaffolds [1].
To date, there are current studies in which 3D bioprinting has been used in mimicking the microenvironment and modelling of most cancer types such as melanoma, glioblastoma, breast, lung, colorectal, etc. and in drug trials for the disease [2].
In order to understand and treat cancer by using 3D bioprinting, the priority is to maximise the similarity of the designed tissue with the target tissue. Therefore, it is recommended to focus on mimicking the targeted cancer model with maximum similarity.
Reference:
1. Augustine, R., Kalva, S. N., Ahmad, R., Zahid, A. A., Hasan, S., Nayeem, A., McClements, L., & Hasan, A. (2021). 3D Bioprinted cancer models: Revolutionizing personalized cancer therapy. Translational oncology, 14(4), 101015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranon.2021.101015
2. Gnatowski, P., Piłat, E., Kucińska-Lipka, J., Saeb, M. R., Hamblin, M. R., & Mozafari, M. (2023). Recent advances in 3D bioprinted tumor models for personalized medicine. Translational oncology, 37, 101750. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranon.2023.101750