Abstract

Biofabrication of 3D Tissue Models For Disease Modeling and Drug Screening

Marc Ferrer, Director, NIH/NCATS

Biofabrication of architecturally defined and physiologically relevant human tissues is emerging as a key technology for drug discovery.  The expectation is that 3D biofabricated tissues produced with human iPSC-derived cells will provide functionally and physiologically relevant assay platforms to test small molecules during drug discovery and help narrow the current gaps between current simplistic in-vitro cell assays, non-predictive in-vivo animal models, and human clinical trials.  Tissue biofabrication integrates advances in tissue engineering technologies and cell biology, with the development of three-dimensional (3D) bioprinters, biocompatible polymers and hydrogels, and methods to validate the morphology and function of human tissues.  I will be presenting some of the work on going at the 3D Tissue Model Laboratory at NCATS to implement rapid, scalable, and reliable biofabrication of architecturally and physiologically defined functional human tissue models in multiwell-plate platforms for disease modeling and drug screening.