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Review
. 2021 Jun 28;12(7):764.
doi: 10.3390/mi12070764.

Cancer Cell Direct Bioprinting: A Focused Review

David Angelats Lobo  1   2 , Paola Ginestra  1 , Elisabetta Ceretti  1 , Teresa Puig Miquel  2 , Joaquim Ciurana  3
Affiliations
Review

Cancer Cell Direct Bioprinting: A Focused Review

David Angelats Lobo et al. Micromachines (Basel). .

Abstract

Three-dimensional printing technologies allow for the fabrication of complex parts with accurate geometry and less production time. When applied to biomedical applications, two different approaches, known as direct or indirect bioprinting, may be performed. The classical way is to print a support structure, the scaffold, and then culture the cells. Due to the low efficiency of this method, direct bioprinting has been proposed, with or without the use of scaffolds. Scaffolds are the most common technology to culture cells, but bioassembly of cells may be an interesting methodology to mimic the native microenvironment, the extracellular matrix, where the cells interact between themselves. The purpose of this review is to give an updated report about the materials, the bioprinting technologies, and the cells used in cancer research for breast, brain, lung, liver, reproductive, gastric, skin, and bladder associated cancers, to help the development of possible treatments to lower the mortality rates, increasing the effectiveness of guided therapies. This work introduces direct bioprinting to be considered as a key factor above the main tissue engineering technologies.

Keywords: 3D printing; bioprinting; cancer.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Methodology and criteria used to select the articles, and organization of the review paper. The last section, “cells used and applications”, focuses on direct or one-step bioprinting, using different types of cancer cells.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Contribution of each natural biopolymer (%) to the total of natural biopolymers used in 3D bioprinting.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Contribution of each group of synthetic polymers (%) to the total of synthetic polymers. Polyethylene glycol (PEG), polylactic acid (PLA), poly(lactic-co-glycolic) acid (PLGA), polycaprolactone (PCL), and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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