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REVIEW ARTICLE

3D-printed Bioreactors for In Vitro Modeling and

Analysis

Balasankar Meera Priyadarshini , Vishwesh Dikshit , Yi Zhang *
1,2
1
1
1 HP-NTU Digital Manufacturing Corporate Lab, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Ave, 639798, Singapore
2 School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Ave, 639798, Singapore

Abstract: In recent years, three-dimensional (3D) printing has markedly enhanced the functionality of bioreactors by
offering the capability of manufacturing intricate architectures, which changes the way of conducting in vitro biomodeling
and bioanalysis. As 3D-printing technologies become increasingly mature, the architecture of 3D-printed bioreactors can be
tailored to specific applications using different printing approaches to create an optimal environment for bioreactions. Multiple
functional components have been combined into a single bioreactor fabricated by 3D-printing, and this fully functional
integrated bioreactor outperforms traditional methods. Notably, several 3D-printed bioreactors systems have demonstrated
improved performance in tissue engineering and drug screening due to their 3D cell culture microenvironment with precise
spatial control and biological compatibility. Moreover, many microbial bioreactors have also been proposed to address the
problems concerning pathogen detection, biofouling, and diagnosis of infectious diseases. This review offers a reasonably
comprehensive review of 3D-printed bioreactors for in vitro biological applications. We compare the functions of bioreactors
fabricated by various 3D-printing modalities and highlight the benefit of 3D-printed bioreactors compared to traditional
methods.

Keywords: Cell culture, Bacteria, Three-dimensional-printed chip, Three-dimensional-printed devices, Three-dimensional-
printed bioreactors

*Corresponding Author: Yi Zhang, HP-NTU Digital Manufacturing Corporate Lab, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Ave,
639798, Singapore; yi_zhang@ntu.edu.sg
Received: March 12, 2020; Accepted: June 03, 2020; Published Online: August 18, 2020

Citation: Priyadarshini BM, Dikshit V, Zhang Y, 2020, Three-dimensional-printed Bioreactors for In Vitro Modeling and
Analysis, Int J Bioprint, 6(4): 267. DOI: org/10.18063/ijb.v6i4.267.

1 Introduction of vascularization and cardiac regeneration
are coupled with the pulsatile flow to augment
1.1 Bioreactor cell differentiation and maturation . Similarly,
[2]
Bioreactors are essential tools that not only bioreactors for lung tissue models are often linked
[3]
guide and support the development of in vitro to airflow setup to imitate native lung functions .
live tissues but also act as culture vessels to In addition, various operational parameters related
study the biological response of the tissues to the flexibility, design, and other characteristics
to physiologically relevant conditions . In of bioreactors greatly influence the biological
[1]
[4]
the context of this review, bioreactors refer to performance of bioreactors . In the past few
devices for cellular and biochemical assays. The years, modeling and applications of bioreactors
design and configuration of a bioreactor should have evolved in various fields of research. Due to
complement the requirements of biological their enormous versatility, bioreactors have been
systems. For example, bioreactors for the study employed in many industries, including biological,

© 2020 Priyadarshini, 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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