Bioreactor-Based Tissue Models as an Alternative Approach in Cancer Research

Abstract

Integration of new technologies in cancer research in medicine provides an opportunity to do more comprehensive studies on more specified areas. One of the major study fields of clinical cancer research is the drug design and targeting studies together with the microenvironment in which most of them are performed on experimental animals. However, there are distinct differences when it comes between animal models and humans: metabolic, immunologic, and genetic. Thus, traditional (2D) cell culture techniques are not insufficient enough in cancer research due to the limitations of not showing the characteristic features as in vivo. Therefore, 3D cell culture techniques were developed to overcome these problems. In the comparison of 3D to 2D cell cultures, the most important advantage is that the 3D culture of cells/tissues presents more likely real in vivo patterns such as drug metabolism, proliferation, and responses to the stimuli.According to the most recent developments in 3D cell culture techniques bioreactor-based 3D cell technologies have been designed. Moreover, these methodologies can also be utilized in combination with biopolymers, microcarriers, spheroids, and organoids. Among these 3D cell culture techniques, the most remarkable one is the rotary cell culture systems (RCCS), because providing microgravity reduces the shear stress caused by the mixing force. In addition to bioreactors, microfluidic chips were also developed as a result of the most innovative approach. Microfluidic chips can also be used in any cancer study depending on the researchers’ needs, providing a study-specific modification and 3D cell culturing with accessible manipulations. Hence, improvements in bioreactors lead to the population and acceleration of cancer-related drug response, immunological and genetic studies as an alternative to experimental animal models.KeywordsBioreactorAlternative modelCancer study3D cell culture