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.