Research Projects

Cancer patients often fail to respond to treatment and develop resistance to cancer therapeutics due to individual genetic mutations, oncogenic amplification, and manipulation in tumor cell machinery. These factors also influence drug uptake capability, metabolism, and removal of drug metabolites from cells. This proposal aims to design and develop a reproducible cancer model platform to capture patient-to-patient variation and screen drug combinations for precision medicine. However, translating patient-specific models into clinical practice is typically slow due to time-consuming modeling strategies, expensive bioinks, and sophisticated templates. The project proposes bioprinting of esophageal and breast cancer organoids, as many Indian men and women suffer from these conditions. The major drawback of bioprinting is that printed cells often lose contact with each other and the matrix, leading to organoid dysfunctionality. Bioink is a vital ingredient in bioprinting processes, and the researchers propose using decellularized extracellular matrix (dECM) to develop bioink to recapitulate the complexity of the native ECM and provide cells with a biomimicking microenvironment like natural tissue. The researchers have developed a novel method for developing tissue-specific bioinks from various tissues and organs, using decellularized esophagus and adipose tissue-derived bioink to fabricate esophageal and breast cancer models. They also developed a protocol to print the tubular structure of the dimension needed for esophageal cancer tissue development and breast cancer model development. To capture the patient-specific drug response, screening first-line chemotherapeutic agents for treating breast and esophageal cancers will be conducted after evaluating their efficacy after a thorough evaluation of the genetic and proteomic analysis of the developed models.