Biology: What's Bioprinting?

Today, if you need a new lung, heart, liver or other organ, you have to wait ... for a long time. Fortunately, a new process called bioprinting in the field of tissue engineering aims to solve this problem. Bioprinting sounds exactly what it is - printing biomaterials from a printer. Of course, the actual process is far more complicated than printing on a computer and waiting for organs to jump out like paper. It begins with a modified inkjet printer and ink composed of stem cells and many other different types of cells.

A promising approach is to print them. Today a lot of things are made by stereo printing, but there seems to be no reason not to put parts of the body there. So far, this "biological printing" is still largely experimental. However, bioprinted tissues are sold for drug testing and it is expected that the first batch of implantable tissue will be available for several years. Bioprinting began in the early 21st century when living cells were discovered to be released from nozzles of ink jet printers without damaging them. Today, not only are the use of multiple print heads to eject different types of cells, but also by attaching and bonding layers of cells with polymers that help maintain the shape of the structure, You can grow. Researchers in various places repair the vascular network necessary to keep the kidney and liver tissues, skin, bones, cartilage, and parts of the body active.

In bioprinting, there are mainly three types of printers that have been used. These are ink jet, laser assisted and extrusion printers. Inkjet printers are mainly used for bioprinting of high speed and large scale products. Inkjet printers called drop-on-demand inkjet printers can accurately print materials and minimize cost and waste. Printers using lasers offer high resolution printing, but these printers are often expensive. You can create a 3D structure by extruding the printer layer in layer printing units like 3D printing. In addition to cells, extrusion presses can also use hydrogels to inject cells.

3D Bioprinting (a) Schematic of a microfluidic printhead (MPH) showing a microfluidic printhead connected to a coaxial nozzle extruder for simultaneous bioprinting of iPSC derived cardiomyocytes and HUVEC cells. (B) Bioprint cellized 10 layer thickness construct. High magnification images of the same structure are displayed in the box below. Scales represent 1 cm and 100 micron, respectively. (C) a graph showing the procedure for preparing covalently crosslinked PEG-fibrinogen based scaffolds prior to in vitro culture

Vascularization of HUVEC and iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes Multicellular 3D bio-printing method based on cardiac tissue engineering