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Biofabrication offers future hope for tackling various obstacles and challenges in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine: A Perspective
The fundamental concepts and the recorded use of the term term “biofabrication” for TERM was recently proposed
tissue engineering, as it is applied today in biomedical field, by the International Society for Biofabrication (ISBF) .
[23]
was originally published by Langer and Vacanti (1993) According to ISBF, biofabrication can be defined as “the
in Science . Since then, tissue engineering research automated generation of biologically functional products
[14]
has grown exponentially due to the recognition that with structural organization from living cells, bioactive
tissue engineering base strategies have the potential to molecules, biomaterials, cell aggregates such as
replace, repair, and regenerate tissue/organs for a variety microtissues, or hybrid cell material constructs, through
of biomedical applications including transplantation, bioprinting or bioassembly and subsequent tissue
therapeutic investigation, bioassay, disease modeling, maturation processes.” In a more narrow sense, emerging
drug development, and delivery. The rapidly evolving field of biofabrication basically enables the researchers
cross-disciplinary field of tissue engineering along with to use or to combine advanced fabrication technologies
its intimately intertwined field of regenerative medicine including 2D/3D printing, biomanufacturing, and
continues to develop and advance. bioassembly of living 3D functional biological products
The most intrinsic purpose, mission, and goal of tissue using smart and cytocompatible biomaterials.
engineering and regenerative medicine (TERM) is to Recently, there has been a big boom in 3D printing or
provide alternate solutions for restoring, replacing, and additive manufacturing (AM) research, and various
maintaining of organ functions of the problematic tissue/ 3D printers have been developed, commercialized,
organ of interest using applied science and engineering and distributed worldwide. Today, many researchers
approaches [14,15] . The crucial difference between TERM from different backgrounds (science, engineering, and
and general science is that TERM is not a traditional way medical) have joined the interdisciplinary research
of doing science or to simply elucidate the origins and field of bioprinting and biofabrication to open the doors
mechanisms of natural phenomenon based on intellectual to previously unimaginable possibilities in medicine
curiosity but has a practical purposes of producing or to search possible application of 3D printing in the
bioartificial organs that make possible medical treatments biomedical field. 3D fabricated plastic organ models have
for patients with serious tissue/organ diseases/injuries become very popular for medical education. In TERM
and offers new hope to many patients who are suffering research field, biological 3D tissue models are one of the
from end-stage organ failure. most attractive topics of application of the bioprinting and
During recent years, a large number of scientists, researchers, biofabrication, such as 3D tissue models for drug screening,
clinicians, and biomedical engineering companies disease models, tissue or organ on a chip, medical sensors,
have been actively engaged in tissue engineering and and biological actuators [24-26] . Such research studies are
regenerative medicine research. Simple tissues (e.g., skin certainly very useful and effective for drug discovery, drug
and engineered cartilage) have already been developed development, and pharmaceutical industry.
and being used clinically [16-20] . Several other less complex Although drug administration is the first choice for
tissues manufactured from a variety of biomaterials using treating patients with diseased/injured organs or organ
a plethora of engineering approaches are at different failure, drugs are effective only in the early stages of
stages of development. Despite scientific progress in the disease or minor injuries. Moreover, for the patients
tissue engineering, there are still several big obstacles who require organ replacement or artificial organs for
in producing complex, functional, and large-sized three- transplantation, generally, no significant effect can be
dimensional (3D) tissues/organs, especially the tissues of expected for drug treatment.
the vital organs that are urgently required for experimental Thus, the biomanufacturing of complex tissue/organ
and clinical transplantation applications. substitutes that fully mimic the natural physiological
conditions of particular tissues/organs could help to
2. Final Mission of alleviate organ failure/replacement issue. In the recent
Biofabrication - Bioprinting past, there has been a substantial and commendable
progress in the field of TERM [27-35] . Although successful
The challenging fields of biofabrication-bioprinting fabrication of various tissue models has been reported,
have emerged as revolutionary approaches to break the taking the engineered complex tissues/organ constructs
limitations of conventional TERM methods by offering from the bench to the bedside still needs focused efforts on
potential technological solution. In brief, bioprinting can scientific as well as potential technological fronts [2,31,36-50] .
be defined as the manufacturing process by employing
computer-aided two-dimensional (2D)/3D printing 3. Biofabrication Bioprinting Solving
techniques to create 2D/3D patterns and to construct Various Challenges
complex 3D structures with living and non-living
biological raw materials to produce 2D or 3D tissues As mentioned above, the main focus of bioprinting and
and organs of interest [21,22] . The official definition of the biofabrication research is to overcome various challenges

2 International Journal of Bioprinting (2019)–Volume 5, Issue 1