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Review aRticle

The arrival of commercial bioprinters – Towards 3D

bioprinting revolution!

*
Deepak Choudhury , Shivesh Anand, May Win Naing *
Bio-Manufacturing Programme, Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech), Agency for Science,
Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore

abstract: The dawn of commercial bioprinting is rapidly advancing the tissue engineering field. In the past few years,
new bioprinting approaches as well as novel bioinks formulations have emerged, enabling biological research groups
to demonstrate the use of such technology to fabricate functional and relevant tissue models. In recent years, several
companies have launched bioprinters pushing for early adoption and democratisation of bioprinting. This article reviews
the progress in commercial bioprinting since the inception, with a particular focus on the comparison of different available
printing technologies and important features of the individual technologies as well as various existing applications. Various
challenges and potential design considerations for next generations of bioprinters are also discussed.

Keywords: Bioprinter; bioprinting; bioinks; 3D printing; rapid prototyping; biofabrication; tissue engineering

*Correspondence to: Deepak Choudhury/May Win Naing, Bio-Manufacturing Programme, Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology
(SIMTech), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), 2 Fusionopolis Way, #08-04, Innovis, Singapore 138634, Singapore;
deepakc@simtech.a-star.edu.sg; winnaingm@simtech.a-star.edu.sg
Received: March 28, 2018; accepted: May 30, 2018; Published Online: June 17, 2018
citation: Choudhury D, Anand S, Naing M W, 2018, The arrival of commercial bioprinters – Towards 3D bioprinting
revolution! Int J Bioprint, 4(2): 139. http://dx.doi.org/10.18063/IJB.v4i2.139

1. introduction to 3D Bioprinting to produce bio-engineered structures serving in
regenerative medicine, pharmacokinetics, and basic cell
1.1 Definition biology studies . The sole purpose of bioprinting is
[7]
The advent of 3D bioprinting has opened exciting new to engineer a fully integrated and functionally restored
[8]
possibilities for tissue engineering, reconstruction biological environment which could be achieved either
and in vitro drug testing studies [1,2] . This additive through scaffold printing and subsequent cell seeding
manufacturing-based (AM) biotechnology utilises or direct cell printing. The scaffold-based fabrication
[3]
bioinks along with living cells (cell aggregates or
tissue spheroids), to spatially construct 3D functional approach involves mimicking of the extracellular matrix
structures without pre-fabricated scaffolds. Before the (ECM) by printing a temporary and biodegradable
[9]
more generic term of bioprinting, organ printing was first supporting structure . Incorporation of live cells into the
coined in 1999 and was defined as computer-aided, jet- bioink increases/magnifies the complexity involved in
based 3D tissue-engineering of living human organs . printing but promises a more homogeneous distribution
[4]
Since then, a host of other printing technologies have of cells as compared to dropwise seeding over a 3D
been developed as well as new bioink formulations [5,6] .
Lately, bioprinting is defined as “computer-aided transfer printed scaffold such that the resulting three-dimensional
processes for patterning and assembly of living and non- cellular constructs better mimic complex biological
living materials with a prescribed 2D or 3D organization functionalities found in native tissues and organs.

The arrival of commercial bioprinters – Towards 3D bioprinting revolution! © 2018 Choudhury D, 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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