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Progress in organ 3D bioprinting

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Fan Liu 1,2, Chen Liu , Qiuhong Chen , Qiang Ao , Xiaohong Tian , Jun Fan , Hao Tong , Xiaohong
Wang 1,3*
1 Department of Tissue Engineering, Center of 3D Printing and Organ Manufacturing, School of Fundamental Sciences,
China Medical University (CMU), Shenyang, China
2 Department of Orthodontics, School of Stomatology, China Medical University, Shenyang, China
3 Center of Organ Manufacturing, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, P.R. China
Abstract: Three dimensional (3D) printing is a hot topic in today’s scientific, technological and commercial areas. It is
recognized as the main field which promotes “the Third Industrial Revolution”. Recently, human organ 3D bioprinting
has been put forward into equity market as a concept stock and attracted a lot of attention. A large number of outstanding
scientists have flung themselves into this field and made some remarkable headways. Nevertheless, organ 3D bioprinting is a
sophisticated manufacture procedure which needs profound scientific/technological backgrounds/knowledges to accomplish.
Especially, large organ 3D bioprinting encounters enormous difficulties and challenges. One of them is to build implantable
branched vascular networks in a predefined 3D construct. At present, organ 3D bioprinting still in its infancy and a great
deal of work needs to be done. Here we briefly overview some of the achievements of 3D bioprinting technologies in large
organ, such as the bone, liver, heart, cartilage and skin, manufacturing.

Keywords: organ; 3D bioprinting; bone; heart; liver; cartilage; skin
*Corresponding to: Xiaohong Wang, Center of Organ Manufacturing, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing
100084, P.R. China; wangxiaohong709@163.com; wangxiaohong@tsinghua.edu.cn

Received: October 16, 2017; Accepted: December 1, 2017; Published Online: January 9, 2018

Citation: Liu F, Liu C, Chen Q H, et al., 2018, Progress in organ 3D bioprinting, Int J Bioprint, 4(1): 128. http://dx.doi.
org/10.18063/IJB.v4i1.128

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1. Introduction have become one of the huge social problems . According
to the statistics, there are about 1.5 millions of patients
It is widely believed that there are 79 organs in who require organ transplantations in China every year,
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the human body . Each of the organs consists of but only less than 1% of patients can obtain suitable
different tissues. Most of the tissues in the organs have organs . Compared to the traditional artificial organs
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heterogeneous structures that confers one or more made from polymers or metals, bioartificial organs made
highly-specific functions. Organs can be divided into from living cells and biomaterials have become more
several groups, such as sensory, internal and structural, and more prevalent.
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according to their main functions . The sensory organs Currently, a variety of bioprinting strategies have been
include the eyes, nose, ears and tongue. The internal developed to tackle the challenges for manufacturing
organs (also known as viscera) include the liver, lung, bioartificial organs with physiological functions [5–8] . A
kidney, heart, esophagus, stomach and bowel, while main character of these strategies is to build complex organ
the structural organs include the bones, cartilages and geometries via spatiotemporal pattern of heterogenoustypes
muscles. of “bioinks”, especially cells. These strategies can be
With the advancement in modern science and technology, classified into three main groups: multi-nozzle rapid
organ failure or deterioration caused by acute/chronic prototyping (MNRP), decellularization organ regeneration
diseases, congenital malformations and traffic accidents and combined mold system. Each of them has its own

Progress in organ 3D bioprinting © 2018 Liu F, et al.. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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