In 10 seconds? All new cancer treatments must be tested in a laboratory setting before being approved to be administered to patients. A technique called 3D bioprinting is creating increasingly accurate representations of cancer (AKA cancer models) that have the potential to improve the cancer drug discovery process.

And all this time I thought ‘cancer models’ were celebrity cancer advocates… Well, I’m here to set you straight! But first, some background: The drug discovery process starts in laboratory studies, then moves to clinical trials (Phase I-IV), and then awaits approval by a regulatory agency like the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Cancer models (any lab-grown version of cancer) are a crucial part of cancer research because how cancer models respond to a potential cancer treatment dictates whether a cancer treatment is selected or not for further investment and study.

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