No Donor Required? Organ Transplantation via 3D Bioprinting

Injury, illness, and congenital disability have always been present for humans. Thus, studies have been carried out throughout history on the reconstruction of the needed tissues and organs.

With the advancing technology, although the transfer from one person to another is very successful, it has serious limitations. The main challenge is accessing adequate tissues and organs for all patients in need. Problems with the immune system cause chronic rejection and destruction over time. Therefore, new solutions are needed to provide the necessary texture. Tissue engineering has emerged at this point.

Tissue engineering aims to use biomomemic tissue or organ substitutes to replace, repair or enlarge tissues damaged by injuries or diseases. No tissue consists of only a single cell. For example, the skin contains layered keratinocytes and fibroblasts, heartbeat is provided by the contraction of cardiomyocytes contained in purkinje fibers and liver functions are based on hepatocytes.

Until today, many traditional strategies have been used in the development of functional tissues such as 3D scaffolding, self-assembly based micro engineering, fiber engineering, and scaffold free cell plate engineering which could not produce reproducible tissue structures with high spatial precision and controllable volume.

3D bioprinting is a recently developed biofabrication technology capable of addressing such a challenge by providing unprecedented accuracy and precision in patterning biomaterials and cells in a 3D volume, highly reproducible manner empowered by a programmed robotic fabrication mechanism. To date, a variety of bioprinting strategies have been proposed and executed, including those based on stereolithography, extrusion, and droplets, for engineering different types of tissue substitutes and models of interest. This review systematically discusses the history of bioprinting and its recent advancements in both instrumentation and methods. Subsequently, it provides a detailed discussion on the requirements for a selection of bioinks to achieve optimal bioprinting of biomimetic constructs.

3D bioprinter

In simple terms, Bio 3D printing is basically the application of layered manufacturing techniques to create three-dimensional structures for tissue engineering. It involves multiple processes with a high degree of complexity, from the design of organic structures to the post-simulation of the material known as growing. 3D bioprinters are a type of 3D printer that works on combining biomaterials such as cells in a way that natural tissues.

Biofabricated ear

3D bioprinting is a field that has been rapidly growing over the last decade and will continue to grow until it is an established method in the clinics. The production of fully biomimetic transplants is the major focus of several studies and current results promise a bright future for the field of bioprinting. Although most of current bioprinted tissue constructs are still infant and only partly mimic relevant biological tissues, trends to focus on proper vascularization of the tissues, multicellular designs, and high-resolution bioprinting form the foundation of producing functional tissues that are suitable for clinical translation. The recent trend toward evaluation in an in vivo environment has demonstrated that the bioprinted constructs are able to perform their functions to varying degrees. It is anticipated that 3D bioprinting will continue to evolve and will find its way from the benches of scientific research toward translational applications in regenerative medicine.