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Regenerative Medicine

Organ printing: promises and challenges

    Vladimir Mironov

    † Author for correspondence

    Medical University of South Carolina, Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, Charleston, South Carolina, USA.

    ,
    Vladimir Kasyanov

    Medical University of South Carolina, Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, Charleston, South Carolina, USA.

    ,
    Christopher Drake

    Medical University of South Carolina, Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, Charleston, South Carolina, USA.

    &
    Roger R Markwald

    Medical University of South Carolina, Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, Charleston, South Carolina, USA.

    Published Online:https://doi.org/10.2217/17460751.3.1.93

    Organ printing or biomedical application of rapid prototyping, also defined as additive layer-by-layer biomanufacturing, is an emerging transforming technology that has potential for surpassing traditional solid scaffold-based tissue engineering. Organ printing has certain advantages: it is an automated approach that offers a pathway for scalable reproducible mass production of tissue engineered products; it allows a precised simultaneous 3D positioning of several cell types; it enables creation tissue with a high level of cell density; it can solve the problem of vascularization in thick tissue constructs; finally, organ printing can be done in situ.The ultimate goal of organ-printing technology is to fabricate 3D vascularized functional living human organs suitable for clinical implantation. The main practical outcomes of organ-printing technology are industrial scalable robotic biofabrication of complex human tissues and organs, automated tissue-based in vitro assays for clinical diagnostics, drug discovery and drug toxicity, and complex in vitro models of human diseases. This article describes conceptual framework and recent developments in organ-printing technology, outlines main technological barriers and challenges, and presents potential future practical applications.

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