January 20, 2023 – Scientists have made great strides within the fight against cancer. The risk of an individual dying from cancer within the United States decreased by 27% This is basically because of researchers who proceed to unravel the complex details of how cancer develops and make advances in treatment.
The recent technology of 3D bioprinting – much like 3D printing the human body using real human cells – now guarantees to speed up this research by allowing scientists to develop 3D tumor models that higher represent patient samples.
The impact might be “enormous,” says Y. Shrike Zhang, PhD, assistant professor of drugs at Harvard Medical School and bioengineer at Brigham and Women's Hospital. who studies 3D bioprinting“While it is not the only technology that could enable tumor modeling in vitro, it is certainly one of the most powerful.”
Why is that this essential? Because the 2D cell cultures The methods of science commonly used today may not capture all of the complexities of cancer growth, spread and response to treatment. This is one reason why so few potential recent cancer drugs – 3.4%, according to an estimate – can pass all clinical tests. The results can't be used to Culture dish to patient.
A 3D bioprint model, alternatively, is likely to be higher in a position to reproduce the “Microenvironment“– all parts (cells, molecules, blood vessels) that surround a tumor.
“The tumor microenvironment plays a key role in determining cancer progression,” says Madhuri DeyPhD student and researcher at Penn State University. “In vitro 3D models are an attempt to [cancer] Microenvironment that provides insight into how tumors respond to chemotherapy or immunotherapy treatments when present in a native microenvironment.”
Dey is the lead writer of a study (funded by the National Science Foundation) that 3D bioprinted breast cancer tumors and successfully treated them. Unlike some previous 3D models of cancer cells, this model was in a position to higher mimic the microenvironment, Dey explains.
Until now, “3D bioprinting of cancer models has been limited to bioprinting individual cancer cells loaded with hydrogels,” she says. But she and her colleagues developed a way (aspiration-assisted bioprinting) that permits them to regulate the placement of blood vessels in relation to the tumor. “This model lays the foundation for studying these nuances of cancer,” Dey says.
“This is pretty cool work,” Zhang says of the Penn State study (by which he was not involved). “Vascularization is always a key component in [a] majority of tumor types.” A model that features blood vessels provides a “critical niche” that can help tumor models reach their full potential in cancer research.
A 3D printer on your body
You've probably heard of 3D printing before and possibly even own a 3D printer (or know someone who does). The concept is like regular printing, but as an alternative of spitting ink onto paper, a 3D printer releases layers of plastic or other materials, lots of or hundreds of times, to create a Object from scratch.
Three-dimensional Bioprinting works in an identical way, with the difference that these layers consist of living cells and form biological structures equivalent to skin, vessels, organs or bones.
Bioprinting has been around since since 1988. So far, it is especially utilized in research contexts, for instance in the sphere regenerative medicineResearch is currently underway into ear reconstruction, nerve regeneration and skin regeneration. The technology has also recently been used to Eye tissue to assist researchers study eye diseases.
The potential of the technology for cancer research has not yet been fully exploited, says Dey. But that might change.
“The use of 3D bioprinted tumor models is approaching translation into cancer research,” says Zhang. “They are increasingly being used in research and [the technology] The pharmaceutical industry has begun to investigate this substance for the development of cancer drugs.”
Because bioprinting might be automated, researchers could use it to create high-quality, complex tumor models on a big scale, Zhang says.
Such 3D models even have the potential to interchange or reduce the usage of animals in tumor drug testing, notes Dey. They “are expected to provide a more accurate drug response than animal models, since the physiology of animals does not resemble that of humans.”
The FDA Modernization Act 2.0A recent U.S. law that removes the requirement to check drugs on animals before marketing them to humans has “further paved the way for such technologies in drug development,” Zhang said.
What if we could create a person tumor model for every patient?
The uses of bioprinting extend beyond the lab, says Dey. Imagine if we could customize 3D tumor models based on biopsies from individual patients. Doctors could test many treatments on these patient-specific models, more accurately predicting how each patient would reply to different therapies. This would help doctors resolve which treatment method is best.
In Dey's study, the 3D model was treated with chemotherapy and immunotherapy and responded to each. This highlights the potential of such 3D models to disclose the body's immune response and be used to check therapies, says Dey.
“We hope that this technique can be used in hospitals in the future, which would speed up cancer treatment,” says Dey.
To this end, she and her colleagues are actually working with real breast cancer tumors which were faraway from patients and recreating them in 3D within the laboratory to make use of them for chemotherapy and immunotherapy screenings.