Epithelial, stem‐cell derived organoids are ideal building blocks for tissue engineering, however, scalable and shape‐controlled bio‐assembly of epithelial organoids into larger and anatomical structures is yet to be achieved. Here, a robust organoid engineering approach, Multi‐Organoid Patterning and Fusion (MOrPF), is presented to assemble individual airway organoids of different sizes into upscaled, scaffold‐free airway tubes with predefined shapes. Multi‐Organoid Aggregates (MOAs) undergo accelerated fusion in a matrix‐depleted, free‐floating environment, possess a continuous lumen, and maintain prescribed shapes without an exogenous scaffold interface. MOAs in the floating culture exhibit a well‐defined three‐stage process of inter‐organoid surface integration, luminal material clearance, and lumina connection. The observed shape stability of patterned MOAs is confirmed by theoretical modelling based on organoid morphology and the physical forces involved in organoid fusion. Immunofluorescent characterization shows that fused MOA tubes possess an unstratified epithelium consisting mainly of tracheal basal stem cells. By generating large, shape‐controllable organ tubes, MOrPF enables upscaled organoid engineering towards integrated organoid devices and structurally complex organ tubes.
Realizing the translational impacts of three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting for cancer research necessitates innovation in bioprinting workflows which integrate affordability, user-friendliness, and biological relevance. Herein, we demonstrate ‘BioArm’, a simple, yet highly effective extrusion bioprinting platform, which can be folded into a carry-on pack, and rapidly deployed between bio-facilities. BioArm enabled the reconstruction of compartmental tumoroids with cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), forming the shell of each tumoroid. The 3D printed core-shell tumoroids showed de novo synthesized extracellular matrices, and enhanced cellular proliferation compared to the tumor alone 3D printed spheroid culture. Further, the in vivo phenotypes of CAFs normally lost after conventional 2D co-culture re-emerged in the bioprinted model. Embedding the 3D printed tumoroids in an immune cell-laden collagen matrix permitted tracking of the interaction between immune cells and tumoroids, and subsequent simulated immunotherapy treatments. Our deployable extrusion bioprinting workflow could significantly widen the accessibility of 3D bioprinting for replicating multi-compartmental architectures of tumor microenvironment, and for developing strategies in cancer drug testing in the future.
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