Recent advances in 3D bioprinting of vascularized tissues

Abstract

3D bioprinting is a technology that combines computing science, biology and material engineering. It has been extensively explored to fabricate 3D vascularized constructs for tissue engineering. This scalable, reproducible and highly precise fabrication technology offers great potential to achieve vascularization in printed tissues, which is an important milestone towards organ printing in the foreseeable future. A successful vascularized tissue integrates a range of hierarchical, perfusable channels within the mechanically supportive biomaterials. This review summarises the recent advances in the 3D bioprinting of vascularized tissues. Firstly, the common biomaterials used as bioinks for 3D bioprinting are introduced. While natural polymers are more suitable to mimic extracellular matrix resulting in effective cell growth, synthetic polymers offer tailorable mechanical properties and printability. Afterwards, the main 3D bioprinting techniques and their most recent practical applications in fabricating perfusable vascular networks are described. Furthermore, the future trends and prospects are also discussed.

Keywords

• 3D bioprinting
• Bioink
• Tissue engineering
• Vascularized tissue
• Inkjet bioprinting
• Extrusion-based bioprinting