3D bioprinting for drug development and screening: Recent trends towards personalized medicine

Abstract

Personalized medicine, leveraging patient-specific genomic data, is revolutionizing treatment paradigms by enabling tailored therapies to individual needs, thus mitigating adverse effects and enhancing clinical outcomes. One innovative application in this field is the use of 3D bioprinting technology to design, develop and screen patient-customized medicines. This technology meticulously designs and develops therapeutic drugs by depositing active pharmaceutical ingredients layer by layer, culminating in a drug delivery structure optimized for the patient's unique dosage requirements. 3D bioprinting represents an emerging confluence of biological sciences and additive manufacturing, meeting the clinical demand for functional biological tissues through the integration of printing technologies, regenerative medicine principles, and advanced material science. This review provides an overview of the current state of 3D bioprinting applications and explores the transformative potential of 3D bioprinting in personalizing medicine. Moreover, the review elucidates the capabilities of 3D bioprinting in drug design, facilitating the production of complex therapeutic regimens in specific dosage forms, such as drugs with tailored dose concentrations, controlled release kinetics, and the capacity to combine multiple therapeutic regimens into a single, easy-to-administer format. This paper also addresses the challenges and obstacles faced in integrating 3D bioprinting techniques into pharmaceutical practice, ranging from technical and regulatory hurdles to scalability. Further, the efficacy of 3D bioprinting as a tool for advancing personalized medicine helps to utilize the full potential of this technology to enhance patient healthcare regimes.