# Nanostructured Biomaterials in 3D Tumor Tissue Engineering Scaffolds: Regenerative Medicine and Immunotherapies

## TL;DR

This paper reviews how 3D tumor models using nanostructured biomaterials can better mimic the tumor environment for drug testing and immunotherapy research.

## Contribution

The paper highlights novel 3D tumor tissue engineering scaffolds combining nanostructured materials for cancer therapy and regeneration.

## Key findings

- 3D tumor spheroids using TTE scaffolds better replicate the tumor microenvironment than 2D models.
- Nanostructured scaffolds enable realistic models for studying tumor metastasis and drug screening.
- TTE scaffolds offer opportunities to evaluate immunological mechanisms in cancer immunotherapies.

## Abstract

The evaluation of nanostructured biomaterials and medicines is associated with 2D cultures that provide insight into biological mechanisms at the molecular level, while critical aspects of the tumor microenvironment (TME) are provided by the study of animal xenograft models. More realistic models that can histologically reproduce human tumors are provided by tissue engineering methods of co-culturing cells of varied phenotypes to provide 3D tumor spheroids that recapitulate the dynamic TME in 3D matrices. The novel approaches of creating 3D tumor models are combined with tumor tissue engineering (TTE) scaffolds including hydrogels, bioprinted materials, decellularized tissues, fibrous and nanostructured matrices. This review focuses on the use of nanostructured materials in cancer therapy and regeneration, and the development of realistic models for studying TME molecular and immune characteristics. Tissue regeneration is an important aspect of TTE scaffolds used for restoring the normal function of the tissues, while providing cancer treatment. Thus, this article reports recent advancements in the development of 3D TTE models for antitumor drug screening, studying tumor metastasis, and tissue regeneration. Also, this review identifies the significant opportunities of using 3D TTE scaffolds in the evaluation of the immunological mechanisms and processes involved in the application of immunotherapies.