Page 37 - IJB-4-2

Review ARticle

Bioprinting of artificial blood vessels

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3,4
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Hooi Yee Ng , Kai-Xing Alvin Lee , Che-Nan Kuo , Yu-Fang Shen 3,4*
1 3D Printing Medical Research Center, China Medical University Hospital, China Medical University, Taichung City,
Taiwan
2 School of Medicine, College of Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung City, Taiwan
3 3D Printing Medical Research Institute, Asia University, Taichung City, Taiwan
4 Department of Bioinformatics and Medical Engineering, Asia University, Taichung City, Taiwan

Abstract: Vascular networks have an important role to play in transporting nutrients, oxygen, metabolic wastes and
maintenance of homeostasis. Bioprinting is a promising technology as it is able to fabricate complex, specific multi-cellular
constructs with precision. In addition, current technology allows precise depositions of individual cells, growth factors and
biochemical signals to enhance vascular growth. Fabrication of vascularized constructs has remained as a main challenge
till date but it is deemed as an important stepping stone to bring organ engineering to a higher level. However, with the ever
advancing bioprinting technology and knowledge of biomaterials, it is expected that bioprinting can be a viable solution for
this problem. This article presents an overview of the biofabrication of vascular and vascularized constructs, the different
techniques used in vascular engineering such as extrusion-based, droplet-based and laser-based bioprinting techniques, and
the future prospects of bioprinting of artificial blood vessels.
Keywords: 3D bioprinting; vascularized constructs; vascular tissue engineering; extrusion-based bioprinting; droplet-based
bioprinting; laser-based bioprinting
*Correspondence to: Yu-Fang Shen, 3D Printing Medical Research Institute, Asia University, Taichung City 41354, Taiwan; cherryuf@gmail.com

Received: April 3, 2018; Accepted: June 6, 2018; Published Online: June 19, 2018

citation: Ng H Y, Lee K-X A, Kuo C-N, et al., 2018, Bioprinting of artificial blood vessels. Int J Bioprint, 4(2): 140. http://
dx.doi.org/10.18063/IJB.v4i2.140

1. introduction of smaller blood vessels that are <6 mm. Vascular grafts
are most commonly used for severe cardiovascular
Tissue engineering has evolved tremendously in the diseases or trauma that resulted in loss of vessels. Even
past decades and is set to revolutionize future medical though autologous vessels is considered as the golden
practices and research . One of the recent focus of standard for vascular grafts, the main challenge lies in
[1]
tissue engineering is on developing artificial biological availability of viable and functional autologous vessels,
organs substitutes either for transplantations or as especially in elderly patients . Alternative options
[4]
models for drug screening. In such cases, one of the such as synthetic vessels are currently available in the
fundamental challenge is to fabricate or create viable market, but most are only suitable for large diameter
and functional vasculatures to support cell growth within vascular replacements that are >8 mm in diameter.
[2]
the engineered scaffold . Vascularization of implanted For vessels that are smaller in diameter (<6 mm),
grafts or drug models is essential to ensure long-term synthetic vessels are found to have poor patency rates
survival. Cellular viability and activities are found to be due to their thrombogenicity . Thus, current strategies
[5]
severely compromised if there are no capillary networks are focused on developing effective autonomous
[3]
within ~200 μm of cells . Another urgent need for vascular grafts which possess similar biomechanical
fabrication of blood vessels is to overcome the problems properties as native vessels for implantations and also
related to the use of vascular grafts for reconstruction on recreating the complex vascular networks required

Bioprinting of artificial blood vessels. © 2018 Ng H Y, 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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