Organ printing

Organ-printing techniques offer the potential to produce living 3D tissue constructs to repair or replace damaged or diseased human tissues and organs. Using these techniques, spatial variations along multiple axes with high geometric complexity can be obtained. The level of control offered by these technologies to develop printed tissues will allow tissue engineers to better study factors that modulate tissue formation and function, and provide a valuable tool to study the effect of anatomy on graft performance. In this chapter, we discuss the history behind substrate patterning, and cell and organ printing, and the rationale for developing organ-printing techniques with respect to the limitations of current clinical tissue engineering strategies in effectively repairing damaged tissues. We discuss current two-dimensional and three-dimensional strategies for assembling cells as well as the necessary support materials such as hydrogels, bioinks, and natural and synthetic polymers adopted for organ-printing research. Furthermore, given the current state-of-the-art in organ-printing technologies, we discuss some of their limitations and provide recommendations for future developments in this rapidly growing field.