WellBioprints: precision droplet-bioprinter for combinatorial high-throughput functional screening of 3D tissue models in preclinical drug development.

New Micro-Tissue Technology – The Future of Drug Testing

Why is it still so difficult to predict whether a drug will work for a patient despite advanced laboratory testing? One of the reasons is the limited scale and imperfection of available models. A new technology being developed by Assoc. Prof. Jan Guzowski from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences could change this, allowing thousands of miniature tumor models to be tested simultaneously.

In the drug development process, particularly in oncology, scientists must test drugs using realistic tumor models that accurately reflect human physiology. Currently used in vitro methods (including multicellular spheroids in microwells, 3D bioprinting, and tumor-on-chip systems) do not allow for the simultaneous replication of a tissue's biological function and the provision of high-throughput testing. In practice, this means choosing between the accuracy of the model and the number of experiments that can be conducted.

Consequently, the preclinical research process is time-consuming, expensive, and limited in terms of the number of therapeutic variants that can be tested. These limitations significantly hinder the development of new therapies, especially immunotherapies requiring complex models, and stall the progress of personalized medicine, where rapid testing of treatment response for a specific patient is necessary.

WellBioprints is a technological platform that creates thousands of nanoliter droplets, each containing live human cells. Each micro-droplet acts like a miniature bioreactor providing a controlled environment in which cells behave similarly to those in the human body. The key element is the appropriate composition and method of manufacturing the droplets - ensuring cell viability and droplet stability in culture - as well as organizing the droplets into regular structures that enable their subsequent identification. As a result, the droplets can function as realistic biological models available for long-term observation in thousands of nearly identical copies.

In the long term, WellBioprints could enable the testing of various therapies directly on a specific patient's cells. This opens the door to precision medicine - where treatment is selected based on the actual reaction of the organism rather than statistics alone.

"Tumors are highly heterogeneous. Every tumor is different, which is why the future of treatment lies in personalizing therapy through functional testing - that is, using cells taken from the patient - and we are taking the first step toward providing the appropriate scale for these types of tests," emphasizes Assoc. Prof. Jan Guzowski.

Assoc. Prof. Jan Guzowski joined the participants of the first edition of PRIME - a science commercialization support program conducted by the Foundation for Polish Science using funds from the European Funds for a Modern Economy (FENG). Together with Dr. Ronald Terrazas Mallea (Technology Transfer Manager) and Dr. Kenji Shoji Sanchez (Business Leader), he will work on developing the competencies necessary to effectively implement and commercialize their research.

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PRIME is the only "tailor-made" acceleration program for the transfer of knowledge and technology for scientists and their research organizations in Poland, offering support for an individual commercialization path for innovative products. The program provides the opportunity to both develop competencies (e.g., training) and acquire practical skills (e.g., talks with potential recipients). For the authors of the best ideas, individualized support is provided to implement the chosen commercialization path. The PRIME project is financed by the European Funds for a Modern Economy (#FENG) program. The project is implemented by the Foundation for Polish Science (#FNP).