A team of researchers from Tel Aviv University have created the world's first fully functioning 3D model of a glioblastoma tumor, which includes 3D-bioprinted cancer tissue and the surrounding tumor environment that affects its development.
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The 3D-bioprinted tumor is made from a gel composition that resembles the brain and includes a system of blood tubes resembling blood vessels through which blood cells and drugs can flow, simulating the development of a real tumor and how it responds to treatments.
The team's findings were published recently in the journal Science Advances.
Glioblastoma is notoriously fatal as it accounts for the majority of brain tumors and is highly aggressive.
The average survival time of patients with glioblastoma is 14-15 months from diagnosis. Glioblastoma spreads quickly and unpredictably, making it particularly challenging to treat with existing therapies. New drugs could drive better patient outcomes, but development methods in laboratory settings are time consuming and cannot predict how individual patients will respond to treatment.
"Our innovation gives us unprecedented access to 3D tumors that better imitate the clinical scenario, enabling optimal investigation," said lead researcher Prof. Ronit Satchi-Fainaro of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, the Sagol School of Neuroscience, and the Director of the Morris Kahn 3D-BioPrinting for Cancer Research Initiative at Tel Aviv University.
"Cancer, like all tissues, behaves very differently in a petri dish or test tube than it does in the human body. Approximately 90% of all experimental drugs fail in clinical trials because the success achieved in the lab is not reproduced in patients," Satchi-Fainaro explained.
In practice, tissue from a patient's tumor is extracted in surgery and then the tem bio-prints a test tumor based on the patient's MRI. The team has approximately two weeks to test and evaluate the efficacy of different therapies.
According to Satchi-Fainaro, a sample from a patient's tumor and the surround tissue can allow the team to bioprint 100 tiny tumors on which drugs can be tested in different combinations to determine the optimal treatment for the patient.
"Alternately, we can test numerous compounds on a 3D-bioprinted tumor and decide which is most promising for further development and investment as a potential drug," she added.
Satchi-Fainaro addd that perhaps the most exciting aspect of her team's breakthrough was the ability to identify proteins and genes in cancer cells that could serve as new targets for drugs – a particularly difficult task when dealing with a tumor inside the brain of a living being.
In one example, researchers were able to use the new technology to successfully target a protein mechanism they had previously identified that causes the immune system to help glioblastoma spread, rather than attacking the cancer cells.
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