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REVIEW ARTICLE

Bioprinting and its Use in Tumor-On-A-Chip

Technology for Cancer Drug Screening: A Review

Lingling Fang , Yu Liu , Junfeng Qiu , Weiqing Wan *
2†
3†
4
1†
1 Department of Anesthesiology, National Cancer Center/National Clinical Research Center for Cancer/Cancer Hospital,
Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, 100021, China
2 Department of Interventional Therapy, National Cancer Center/National Clinical Research Center for Cancer/Cancer
Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing 100021, China
3 China Economics and Management Academy, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, 100081, China
4 Department of Neurosurgery, Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, 100070, China
† These authors contributed equally to this work.

Abstract: The rising global incidence of cancer and high attrition rates of anticancer drugs make it imperative to design
novel screening platforms to increase the success rate of chemotherapeutic agents. Advances in cell culture models from
two-dimensional to three-dimensional platforms, along with microfluidics, have resulted in the creation of tumor-on-a-chip
technology, which enables high-throughput molecular screening and helps to simulate the dynamic tumor microenvironment.
Furthermore, advancements in bioprinting have allowed the structural and physiological aspects of the tumor to be recreated
accurately and help to mimic cell-cell interactions and cell-extracellular matrix. This paper provides a comprehensive review
of three-dimensional bioprinting to fabricate a tumor-on-a-chip platform to advance the discovery and screening of anticancer
agents and provides a perspective on the challenges and future directions associated with the adoption of this technology to
advance cancer research.

Keywords: 3D bioprinting; Tumor-on-a-chip platform; Anticancer drug screening

*Correspondence to: Weiqing Wan, Department of Neurosurgery, Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, 100070, China;
weiqingwan111@163.com

Received: April 14, 2022; Accepted: May 20, 2022; Published Online: August 16, 2022
Citation: Fang L, Liu Y, Qiu J, et al., 2022, Bioprinting and Its Use in Tumor-On-A-Chip Technology for Cancer Drug Screening: A Review.
Int J Bioprint, 8(4):603. http://doi.org/10.18063/ijb.v8i4.603
1. Introduction nations [4,5] . The success rate of anticancer medications
entering clinical trials and receiving U.S. Food and Drug
Cancer is the second leading cause of mortality Administration marketing approval is between 5% and
worldwide, accounting for 9.6 million fatalities in 2018, 10%, which is significantly lower than that of drugs for
or one in every six deaths . Global Cancer Statistics other diseases [6-8] . Candidates that show promise in the
[1]
(GLOBACAN) estimated that 19.3 million new cancer preclinical stage often fail during clinical development,
cases and over 10 million cancer deaths would occur in suggesting that current in vitro preclinical models used
2020, indicating an upward trend in cancer incidence for drug screening are not reliable in predicting in vivo
worldwide [2,3] . The high burden of cancer and cancer- efficacy and toxicity of anticancer drugs in humans . The
[8]
related mortality has led to huge investment in time and standard treatment for cancer relies on a “one-size-fits-all”
money by pharmaceutical companies in drug development treatment approach using chemotherapeutic agents that
of oncologic treatments. Even after extensive research may not always show positive responses in all patients
has been conducted, patients’ response to cancer therapies with cancer, thereby necessitating the development of
still remains unpredictable, and cancer is linked to a personalized or precision treatment options for certain
significant financial burden, particularly in developing patient populations. High attrition rates for anticancer

© 2022 Author(s). This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, permitting distribution and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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