3D Printed Cancer Models for Pre-clinical Research

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Current research into developing new anti-cancer treatments is constrained by a lack of suitable pre-clinical models to test them in. At present, cancer research is reliant on animal models and basic cellular models, neither of which are a good representation of human cancers. These models do not effectively replicate the tumour microenvironment that is known to play a critical role in drug resistance, thereby these models do not accurately reflect how these drugs will interact in the body, nor their efficacy in treating the cancer. Carcinotech's 3D bioprinted models aim to address these shortcomings, incorporating patient cells, immune cells, and cancer stem cells that are isolated from human cancer biopsy samples. As such, Carcinotech's models accurately reflect the tumour structure and the cancer microenvironment, resulting in a more valid and illustrative model that can be used for drug testing and drug discovery, for pre-clinical testing, and as a personalised medicine analysis tool. Having already developed commercial glioblastoma 3D printed models, we plan to use this grant to synthesise and validate similar models for ovarian, lung, and breast cancer.