Imaging biomarkers quantify therapeutic effect in 3D-printed skin cancer constructs (Conference Presentation)

Chemical space for small molecule therapeutics discovery is greatly under-explored due to difficulties in animal testing, the first bottleneck compounds encounter in going from formula to human use. We developed and validated an assay that combines 3D tissue biofabrication with high-throughput imaging biomarkers. This may impact more diseases than just skin cancer, where we have recently shown promising preliminary findings. Our skin constructs have normal epidermis, with populations of human keratinocytes, dermis with human fibroblasts and tumor spheroids containing populations of human squamous cell carcinoma cells. We present imaging biomarkers that show the cellular chemotherapeutic treatment. This constitutes a novel chemotherapeutic assay that may enable a paradigm-shifting drug discovery pipeline. Such a pipeline could enable tissue-relevant assay on a high throughput scale and be both more robust than monolayer cell culture and easier than animal models.