Tissue-Specific Bioinks for 3D Bioprinting of Cancers-on-Chips
Hee-Gyeong Yi
Department of Rural and Biosystems Engineering,
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Chonnam National University
hgyi@jnu.ac.kr
Abstract
Microphysiological systems are emerging tools for modeling cancers in vitro to explore advanced anti-cancer approaches. Conventional cancer models have failed in capturing the underlying mechanisms of how cancer reacts to the current anti-cancer treatments due to the lack of similarities with the resistances developed in original cancers. Although it has been elucidated that cancer microenvironment influences the development of cancer resistance and the pathological behaviors, the challenge is construction of the cancer and its milieu as it is extremely complicated with heterogeneous components. Recently, biofabrication technologies have provided ways to spatially control multiple types of cells and biomaterials to mimic the native physiology of human tissue. In particular, 3D cell-printing facilitates to build bioinks, hydrogels containing live cells, as building blocks, and therefore, it enables to construct tissue-like structure composed of various types of cells and biomaterials. Moreover, the use of organ-derived extracellular matrix (ECM) hydrogel as bioink has been proved it is promising to preserve the unique composition of biomolecules varying between each organ and to provide tissue-specific matrix environment. Therefore, the resulting tissue-specific bioink and and 3D bioprinting technology become powerful platforms to create highly biomimetic cancers-on-chips to perform test of anti-cancer compounds. In addition, this approach has shown the possibilities in modeling various types of cancers for future cancer research.
Short Bio
Prof. Hee-Gyeong Yi awarded a Ph.D. from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) under the supervision of Prof. Dong-Woo Cho in Republic of Korea (Aug. 2018). After that, she had co-worked with teams of College of Medicine at Seoul National University and Department of Mechanical Engineering at POSTECH to perform her project funded by The Young Researcher Program of Korea NRF as a Principal Investigator (2019 – present). She then joined Chonnam National University in the Fall of 2020 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Rural and Biosystem Engineering, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Ever since she was a kid, she has raised interests in engineering interdisciplinary approaches for biological applications, and she has focused on 3D bioprinting technologies for various biomedical applications such as organs on chips for drug discovery, living tissue implants for organ regeneration, and cell/drug delivery system. Her current research explores advanced bio-manufacturing technologies for building biosystems for the bioengineering/agricultural applications.