I.
Introduction
In this modern age, various innovations and drugs have been tried and used to
treat various diseases inflicting humans. However, data collected from clinical trials
in the United States of America by McGill University stated that out of 177 stage III
clinical trials performed in the United States, only 37% were successful despite the
fact that a total of 20.135 subjects were used. These data suggest that a significant
number of research efforts ended with meaningless results due to limitations from
said experiments and clinical trials. (The Globe and Mail, 2015)
One of various new methods currently being incorporated in biomedical
research is in vitro disease modelling, which is a development from stem cell
techniques. However, the current method still has a lot of limitations as in vitro
studies do not wholly represent mechanisms in which diseases develop. This causes
lack of data about the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of drugs being tested
for said disease. (Unternaehrer and Daley, 2011)
One latest innovation in in vitro disease modelling is 3D organ printing. It is a
technology which incorporates biocompatible material, stem cells, and other supporting
materials to replicate organs in three dimensional forms. This technology has already
been applied in regenerative medicine such as organ transplantation as the resulting
printed organ has similar anatomical and physiological properties as a real organ.
(Murphy and Atala, 2014)
Therefore, the authors of this paper made a literature review by combining
theories of disease modelling. This review aims to propose to researchers the idea of
applying 3D organ printing technology to aid in increasing effectiveness in drug
research and treatment.
II.
Methodology
The review is done by gathering data from various literary sources, both
printed (medical journal articles and medical textbooks) and electronic (websites and
online journal articles). Some of the key words used in searching for literature are
“3D organ printing”, “Stem cells”, and “Disease modelling”. The various literature
used in this review are cited from sources that are trusted and have their validity
tested. After data from literature are gathered, read, and studied comprehensively,