Studying the biology of cancer is essential to develop new treatments. And a device developed by Enea researchers, in collaboration with the Tuscan company Kentstrapper Srl, promises to make it simpler than ever. It’s called BioVERVE, and it’s a low-cost bioprinter, capable of 3D printing tumor tissues with the precision of the most expensive professional bioprinters, and thus making the most modern preclinical testing technologies for drugs and innovative oncology therapies much more accessible. .
“Compared to traditional in vitro cultures, 3D bioprinted models are able to more effectively mimic human tissue, healthy or pathological, providing a complementary model for studies on the effects of radiation and chemotherapy therapies on tumors,” explains Francesca Antonelli , researcher at the ENEA Laboratory of Biomedical Technologies who collaborated on the development of the new bioprinter prototype described in the journal Applied Sciences.
Given the greater effectiveness, the use of 3D models for the study of cancer has increased significantly over the last ten years. But the impact of this technology is still limited by the high costs of bioprinters, which varies between 50 and 200 thousand dollars, and prevents many laboratories, especially in universities, from being able to access them. “Here, therefore, is our idea of transforming a low-cost 3D printer into a home-made 3D bioprinter capable of printing a three-dimensional model of medulloblastoma, the main pediatric brain tumor, with excellent results,” continues the researcher.
The hope of Enea researchers is that the new BioVERVE system will help simplify the procedures necessary to ferry a promising therapy in the laboratory towards clinical practice. Often, in fact, new potential oncological drugs struggle to replicate the results obtained in vitro once tested on animal models and humans, and part of the blame is probably attributable to the lack of preclinical cellular models capable of faithfully replicating the complexity of the context clinical.
“The possibility of modifying non-professional 3D printers to adapt them to bioprinting processes can considerably reduce the costs of acquiring equipment for laboratories, allowing access to the technology by a wider audience of researchers and, consequently, paving the way for new lines of biomedical research”, concludes Antonelli.