Engineering Biomaterials to Model Immune‐Tumor Interactions In Vitro

Abstract

Engineered biomaterial scaffolds are becoming more prominent in research laboratories to study drug efficacy for oncological applications in vitro, but do they have a place in pharmaceutical drug screening pipelines? The low efficacy of cancer drugs in phase II/III clinical trials suggests that there are critical mechanisms not properly accounted for in the pre‐clinical evaluation of drug candidates. Immune cells associated with the tumour may account for some of these failures given recent successes with cancer immunotherapies; however, there are few representative platforms to study immune cells in the context of cancer as traditional 2D culture is typically monocultures and humanized animal models have a weakened immune composition. Biomaterials that replicate tumour microenvironmental cues may provide a more relevant model with greater in vitro complexity. In this review, we explore the pertinent microenvironmental cues which drive tumour progression in the context of the immune system, discuss how these cues can be incorporated into hydrogel design to culture immune cells, and describe progress toward precision oncological drug screening with engineered tissues.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved