Sacrificial Bioprinting of a Mammary Ductal Carcinoma Model

Cancer tissue engineering has remained challenging due to the limitations of the conventional biofabrication techniques to model the complex tumor microenvironment. Here, the utilization of a sacrificial bioprinting strategy is reported to generate the biomimetic mammary duct-like structure within a hydrogel matrix, which is further populated with breast cancer cells, to model the genesis of ductal carcinoma and its subsequent outward invasion. This bioprinted mammary ductal carcinoma model provides a proof-of-concept demonstration of the value of using the sacrificial bioprinting technique for engineering biologically relevant cancer models, which may be possibly extended to other cancer types where duct-like structures are involved.