Newsletter_03-2024_EN

Researchers are looking to groundbreaking technologies like bioprinting to
streamline the drug development process, potentially saving millions of dollars
and reducing reliance on animal testing.
Reducing Costs and Increasing Accuracy:
Exploring Bioprinting‘s Game-Changing
Role in Drug Testing
(Photo credit: iStock)
Researchers are looking to the latest technological advancements to
help speed the process of bringing new pharmaceuticals to market.
The whole drug development process requires up to fourteen years
and over $2 billion in investment, so any advantage can lead to
considerable savings. Bioprinting is one area of biotech that has the
potential to improve this situation.
The promise of bioprinting
Bioprinting is a cutting-edge technology that uses 3D printers and
biomaterials to create living tissues and organs for medical applications.
By building up cells and biomaterials layer upon layer, it is
possible to construct functioning tissues and organs. This has clear
promise in the area of organ transplantation, but the possibility of full
organ transplants remains a few decades away.
In the meantime, a potential game-changer lies in applying bioprinting
to drug testing. Traditionally, drugs are tested on two-dimensional
cell cultures or animals before human trials. But those
processes are expensive and lengthy, and they also fail to predict all
possible human responses accurately. Here, bioprinting steps in to
revolutionize the process.
The benefits of bioprinting in drug development
By leveraging bioprinting, scientists can design 3D tissues that mimic
specific human organs or diseases. „Organ-on-a-chip (OOC)
models, organoids or specific disease tissues engineered from human
cells offer a more human-relevant model for detecting a drug‘s
effectiveness or side effects before it advances to human trials,“ says
Vidmantas Šakalys, Chief Executive Officer of Vital3D Technologies,
a biotech company that specializes in 3D bioprinting solution.
„Instead of a broad-brush, one-size-fits-all approach, bioprinting
will make it possible to observe how specific drugs interact with different
human body tissues, bringing an unprecedented level of accuracy
and speed to drug testing.“
There are several tangible benefits to this approach. First, bioprinting
could significantly reduce the time and cost associated with
drug development, meaning companies could know a drug’s effect
sooner, minimizing expensive failed trials. Second, this technology
has the potential to decrease reliance on animal testing, marking a
significant shift toward more human and effective approaches in
biomedical sciences.
Addressing challenges ahead
Still, there are certain challenges left to face before bioprinting can
be adopted for mainstream drug testing. „The human body is infinitely
complex in its chemical and biophysical structures, making it
highly difficult to create testing models that closely resemble the necessary
environment,“ says Šakalys. „The main limitation is the fact
that currently there are no standardized tissue sourcing or processing
techniques, and no standardized cell medium formulations or
well-defined tissue engineering matrices.“
But biotech firms are making progress nonetheless, Šakalys says.
“Currently, the organ-on-a-chip development field is experiencing
exponential growth, which suggests a promising future for actively
adapting this technology in research. As technological innovations
continue to enhance the reproducibility, complexity, and scalability of
organ-on-a-chip models, researchers can anticipate an increasingly
refined toolkit for understanding human physiology and pathology.”
Vital3D
L 10224 Vilnius
www.reinraum.de | www.cleanroom-online.com NEWSLETTER | Edition EN 03-2024
page 4/33