Engineered Cell Microenvironments: A Benchmark Tool for Radiobiology

The development of engineered cell microenvironments for fundamental cell mechanobiology, in vitro disease modeling, and tissue engineering applications increased exponentially during the last two decades. In such context, in vitro radiobiology is a field of research aiming at understanding the effects of ionizing radiation (e.g., X-rays/photons, high-speed electrons, and high-speed protons) on biological (cancerous) tissues and cells, in particular in terms of DNA damage leading to cell death. Herein, the perspective provides a comparative assessment overview of scaffold-free, scaffold-based, and organ-on-a-chip models for radiobiology, highlighting opportunities, limitations, and future pathways to improve the currently existing approaches toward personalized cancer medicine.