Strategies for 3D bioprinting of spheroids: A comprehensive review

Abstract

Biofabricated tissues have found numerous applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine in addition to the promotion of disease modeling and drug development and screening. Although three-dimensional (3D) printing strategies for designing and developing customized tissue constructs have made significant progress, the complexity of innate multicellular tissues hinders the accurate evaluation of physiological responses in vitro. Cellular aggregates, such as spheroids, are 3D structures where multiple types of cells are co-cultured and organized with endogenously secreted extracellular matrix and are designed to recapitulate the key features of native tissues more realistically. 3D Bioprinting has emerged as a crucial tool for positioning of these spheroids to assemble and organize them into physiologically- and histologically-relevant tissues, mimicking their native counterparts. This has triggered the convergence of spheroid fabrication and bioprinting, leading to the investigation of novel engineering methods for successful assembly of spheroids while simultaneously enhancing tissue repair. This review provides an overview of the current state-of-the-art in spheroid bioprinting methods and elucidates the involved technologies, intensively discusses the recent tissue fabrication applications, outlines the crucial properties that influence the bioprinting of these spheroids and bioprinted tissue characteristics, and finally details the current challenges and future perspectives of spheroid bioprinting efforts in the growing field of biofabrication.

Keywords: Biofabrication; Bioprinting; Organoids; Self-assembly; Spheroids.