Trending applications of in vitro bone models (Maria V. Colombo - PhD-BIO) 

Identify how many in vitro bone models are present in literature, regarding cell biology and cell and tissue engineering. This models are used to recreate the microenvironment of physiological bone to study some pathologies of bone, as cancer metastasis. I started from Web of Science, combining two different searches: “in vitro model” AND “bone” and I found 1440 papers. Then I identified the main 10 categories interested in “in vitro bone models”. I selected the papers of cell biology, oncology and cell tissue engineering, which are in my opinion the most focused in my research field and isolated 379 papers. Then I selected the papers of the last 5 years (2015-2020) to see the more trending topics as which type of materials to develop the model or for which application are used, like study of a particular pathology (115 papers). The next steps will be the research of the same keywords in Scopus and apply the same refinements. The results from Web of Science and Scopus will be exported to Mendeley or to Excel. The list of the paper will be then sorted by application.
Literature review on in vitro models of developing bone and related diseases (Maria Vittoria Colombo - PhDBio)
In vitro bone models are used in tissue engineering to study the physiology of tissue microenvironment and more in detail to replicate specific bone pathologies as cancer metastasis. With the aim of delineating mechanisms involved in the development of these diseases, numerous studies have been carried out to identify the triggers of bone invasion by cancer cells. One of the major limitations of these studies is the lack of models of bone-cancer that can strictly mimic all the biological processes occurring in vivo, not allowing a correct understanding of the pathology. The aim of this review is to summarize the status of advanced 3D in vitro models excluding two dimensional cultures and in vivo animal models.
Starting from Web of Science (WOS), two different searches were combined: “in vitro model” and “bone”, founding 1440 papers. Then, the main 10 categories interested in “in vitro bone models” were identified and selected for the research field as cell biology, oncology and cell tissue engineering (379 papers). Hence, the research was restricted from the papers of the last 5 years (2015-2020) to see the more trending topics as which type of materials to develop the model or for which application are used, like study of a particular pathology (115 papers). Among these last list of 115 papers, one review (Owen, R. & Reilly, G. C. In vitro Models of Bone Remodelling and Associated Disorders. Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol. 6, (2018)) appeared to be very interesting for the scope of this current paper, discarding the previous search that was not too focused to the aim of the review. Starting from its references (n=185), more papers were added to the list adding more specific WOS searches. In detail, the string TOPIC: (”bone model” AND (”sarcoma” OR ”tumor” OR ”cancer” OR ”developing” OR ”remodelling”)) was searched, allowing to add 58 more papers to the list. As done for the previous search, topic (figure 1) and categories (figure 2) were analyzed.
Figure 1. WOS topics of the review
Figure 2. WOS categories of the review
Afterwards this list was exported to Excel to divide the studies in categories (Table 1). As first step, only studies of the last 10 years were kept (2010-2020). Then, the works were divided based on the type of journal of publication, multidisciplinary or biology, giving score 1 or 2 respectively. Subsequently, studies involving the treatment of implantable systems were discarded ( i.e. coatings of prosthesis). Next, abstract and introductions were been read to verify if human-derived or animal-derived cells were used. Finally, works were sorted by application of advanced systems, in detail if hydrogels, bioprinting, bioreactors or simple 2D culture were used.
Table 1. Extract of the Excel table