Future perspectives
With advances in tissue engineering, the possibility of regenerating de
novo tissue or organs in vitro has become a real matter for the first
time in medicine history. Despite many challenges, the successful
demonstration of printable tissue structures during the last decade is
good sign for a very exciting and promising approach in various medical
and industrial application domains, which worth more investigation.
Tissue engineering is transdisciplinary, and in order to push the
AM-based tissue engineering beyond the laboratory, comprehensive and
systematic studies by engineers, scientists, and clinicians on bioink
optimization, bioreactors engineering and cell culture environment are
critically needed to enable high throughput production that is
associated with efficient screening assays.
Because living tissues/organs structure is very complex, to reproduce
them in vitro requires the development of printing tools which able to
print hybrid materials (bioinks) with high resolution, speed and
maintained biocompatibility, and reproducibility. This could be achieved
by adopting a combined printing technology [Giannitelli, et al,
2015].
With suitable bioinks, supported by advanced biofabrication
technologies, this technology will allow bridging the currently huge
existing gap between the lab and fab to ultimately meeting the current
clinical and industrial needs and push the boundaries for advanced drug
discovery and regenerative medicine.