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.
Highlights
Three-dimensional (3D) printing, known as Additive Manufacturing (AM), has its origin in 1986, with stereolithography (SLA) as the first 3D printing technology [1,2]
Gastric-related and skin cancers have a low contribution on cancer research using direct bioprinting, which is a little bit strange, because one common metastatic site for melanoma is the gastrointestinal tract [188]
The research is mainly focused on bladder replacement, for example, using collagen and polyglycolide scaffolds cultured with autologous bladder urothelial and muscle cells [189], or generation of organoids using transurethral or xenograft resections [190]
Summary
Three-dimensional (3D) printing, known as Additive Manufacturing (AM), has its origin in 1986, with stereolithography (SLA) as the first 3D printing technology [1,2]. Different technologies may be used in 3D bioprinting, the most popular technology is extrusion-based printing [10] This technology admits a wide range of materials, alone or combined with cells, in the form of a bioink [4]. The hydrogels have attractive uses in bioprinting due to their solid/aqueous state, temperature and humidity dependence [16], biodegradability, biocompatibility, adaptive mechanical strength, and availability [10] Their limitations of dissolution kinetics in body fluids and problems in the sterilization process can be avoided with the substitution of other materials, such as metals, ceramics, and polymers, depending on the final purposes of the study [11]. In extrusion printing, the bioink must be biocompatible and with specific viscosity [17,18], while maintaining cell viability and functionality after the bioprinting processes [19]
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