3D Bioprinting: The State of the Art in Regenerative Medicine

Bioprinting is fast becoming one of the most promising technologies for revolutionizing the diagnosis and treatment of multiple medical conditions, with applications for pharmaceutical screening, toxicology studies, and tissue and organ transplantation.

Bioprinting relies on advanced additive manufacturing technologies (commonly known as 3D printing) to configure cells, biomaterials, and biomolecules for the fabrication of tissue-mimicking constructs. This approach utilizes bio-inks (composed of biocompatible substances) as matrices for fabricated cells, which can be further nurtured in bioreactors to reach functional maturity.

As a disruptive technology showing explosive potential for regenerative medicine, myriad health applications, and even cosmetic surgery, the global 3D bioprinting market is expected to reach USD 2.6 billion by 2024, according to a report by Grand View Research, Inc.

Stanford University researcher Utkan Demirci says, “Just as the printing press allowed massive amounts of information to be accessed at low cost for the first time in mankind’s history, so bioprinting could potentially provide a high-throughput and affordable way to assemble cells to make complex tissue constructs that are widely available to a very large number of researchers and scientists.”

3D bioprinting is currently being used to fabricate heart, skin, and even bone tissues.

BIOLIFE4D, a Chicago-based medical tech firm specializing in 3D bioprinting and tissue engineering, has succeeded in fabricating a cardio patch that can heal tissues damaged by heart attacks.

As reported by Patrick O’Leary at the University of Minnesota, “The team used laser-based bioprinting to fit stem cells (based on adult human heart cells) to a matrix developed around a 3D scan of heart tissue’s native proteins. When those cells grew, the matrix not only replicated the structures of regular heart tissue (down to one micron) but started beating in sync.”

The entire process was completed in record time, encouraging BIOLIFE4D to shift its focus to cardiac vascular constructs in its quest to eventually print a complete human heart.

“The speed at which we bioprinted 3D human cardiac patches, within days, is unheard of within the scientific community,” said Dr. Ravi Birla, chief science officer at BIOLIFE4D. “These efforts clearly demonstrate our ability to bioprint human tissue and provide a clear and rapid pathway towards bioprinting human hearts.”

Cosmetics giant L’Oreal Paris has partnered with Organovo, a San Diego bioprinting company, to 3D-bioprint human skin patches with the aim of eliminating human and animal testing. The technology enables L’Oreal to conduct more accurate testing, and 3D bioprinted skin tissue also has medical applications that increasingly constitute the state of the art in burn care.

Treating severe burns has traditionally required that healthy skin taken from healthy areas of the body be grafted to damaged tissues. When burns are extensive, however, a patient often doesn’t have enough undamaged tissue to spare.

This problem is being overcome with 3D bioprinted skin cells that are applied directly to burns and that grow organically over the damaged area, eliminating the need for grafts from the patient’s own body by enabling burned tissues to regenerate and wounds to heal with dramatically less scarring.

While successful 3D bioprinting of soft tissues has been well established, until recently the bioprinting of bones was viewed as the next frontier. That frontier has now been successfully crossed with the announcement that a team at Swansea University’s Welsh Centre for Printing and Coating has developed transplantable bone tissues.

This technology is predicted to replace current methods of grafting, which rely on bone derived from a patient’s own body or harvested from a cadaver. Both approaches preclude large sections of bones from being transplanted and instead rely on the grafting of small portions of living bone tissue which slowly grow to fuse with existing bone.

With 3D bioprinting, much larger sections of bone can be fabricated in precise accordance with the patient’s own anatomy, and unlike traditional bone grafting that involves osteogenesis, 3D bioprinted bone grafts dispense with this step, accelerating fusion to existing bone and thus significantly reducing healing time.

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