Open AccessProgress in scaffold‐free bioprinting for cardiovascular medicine
Author(s) -
Moldovan Nicanor I.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of cellular and molecular medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.44
H-Index - 130
eISSN - 1582-4934
pISSN - 1582-1838
DOI - 10.1111/jcmm.13598
Subject(s) - biofabrication , scaffold , 3d bioprinting , economic shortage , tissue engineering , computer science , regenerative medicine , self healing hydrogels , transplantation , nanotechnology , biomedical engineering , engineering , medicine , stem cell , biology , materials science , surgery , microbiology and biotechnology , linguistics , philosophy , chemical engineering , government (linguistics)
Abstract Biofabrication of tissue analogues is aspiring to become a disruptive technology capable to solve standing biomedical problems, from generation of improved tissue models for drug testing to alleviation of the shortage of organs for transplantation. Arguably, the most powerful tool of this revolution is bioprinting, understood as the assembling of cells with biomaterials in three‐dimensional structures. It is less appreciated, however, that bioprinting is not a uniform methodology, but comprises a variety of approaches. These can be broadly classified in two categories, based on the use or not of supporting biomaterials (known as “scaffolds,” usually printable hydrogels also called “bioinks”). Importantly, several limitations of scaffold‐dependent bioprinting can be avoided by the “scaffold‐free” methods. In this overview, we comparatively present these approaches and highlight the rapidly evolving scaffold‐free bioprinting, as applied to cardiovascular tissue engineering.