Most drug candidates and therapeutic methods could enter preclinical trials but eventually fail to be approved for clinical applications. A main cause of these failures is that 2D monolayer cell cultures as traditional preclinical models are limited in the ability to recapitulate the native microenvironment where the cells originate. In order to better predict the cellular responses of real organisms, there is a need to create 3D in vitro disease models that incorporate numerous essential elements of physiological microenvironments for the study of multilevel interactions that occur at adjacent and distant sites.

The 3D reconstruction of complex tissue/organ architectures requires precise placement of cells and biomaterials with high hierarchical accuracy and structural heterogeneity, beyond what is possible with conventional fabrication technologies. The solutions generally require fundamental, conceptual advances in both materials science and bioengineering.

Our approach is to combine advanced manufacturing technologies of 3D printing, bioprinting and nanofabrication that permit the construction of integrated biological microsystems with device infrastructures, providing in vitro tools to (i) fundamentally model disease progression and explore the mechanisms from molecular to tissue level, and (ii) preclinically identify therapeutic methods, screen drug candidates and test biomedical devices.