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Review
. 2023 May 2;9(4):742.
doi: 10.18063/ijb.742. eCollection 2023.

Evolution of bioprinting and current applications

Laura Mendoza-Cerezo  1 , M Rodríguez-Rego Jesús  1 , Antonio Macías-García  2 , Alfonso C Marcos-Romero  1 , Antonio Díaz-Parralejo  2
Affiliations
Review

Evolution of bioprinting and current applications

Laura Mendoza-Cerezo et al. Int J Bioprint. .

Abstract

Bioprinting is a very useful tool that has a huge application potential in different fields of science and biotechnology. In medicine, advances in bioprinting are focused on the printing of cells and tissues for skin regeneration and the manufacture of viable human organs, such as hearts, kidneys, and bones. This review provides a chronological overview of some of the most relevant developments of bioprinting technique and its current status. A search was carried out in SCOPUS, Web of Science, and PubMed databases, and a total of 31,603 papers were found, of which 122 were finally chosen for analysis. These articles cover the most important advances in this technique at the medical level, its applications, and current possibilities. Finally, the paper ends with conclusions about the use of bioprinting and our expectations of this technique. This paper presents a review on the tremendous progress of bioprinting from 1998 to the present day, with many promising results indicating that our society is getting closer to achieving the total reconstruction of damaged tissues and organs and thus solving many healthcare-related problems, including the shortage of organ and tissue donors.

Keywords: 3D printing; Bioprinting; Organ culture; Tissue engineering; Tissue regeneration.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
PRISMA flow diagram depicting literature search, exclusion process, eligibility criteria, and final included papers. One hundred and nineteen papers were included in this review without publication date restriction.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Number of publications (of the 122 selected articles) by year of publication.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Representative map of the number of publications (of 122 selected articles) per country/region. The actual counts are as follows: United States (53), China (11), Germany (9), United Kingdom (9), Netherlands (8), South Korea (6), Japan (5), India (3), Israel (2), Beirut (1), South Africa (1), Canada (1), Qatar (1), Russia (1), Australia (1), Sweden (1), Belgium (1), France (1), Ireland (1), Italy (1), Thailand (1), Taiwan (1), Latvia (1), Turkey (1), and Iran (1).
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Relevant milestones in the evolution of bioprinting. 1998: cell growth on prefabricated 3D structure. 2000: methodologies based on nanodepositions with syringes. 2003: approach of joining cells with hydrogels to form organs. 2004: emergence of the term “bioprinting.” 2006: encapsulation of cells in hydrogels. 2009: drug binding and bioprinting. 2012: bioprinting of heart tissue. 2013: bioprinting of human ear with coil. 2014: bioprinting with HeLa cells for tumor studies. 2015: bioprinting of brain-like structures with encapsulated primary neurons. 2016: development of integrated organ and tissue bioprinter. 2017: bioprinting of functional thyroid gland and ovarian tissue in mice. 2019: bioprinting of biomimetic scaffolds that en able regeneration of damaged axons in the spinal cord of mice. 2020: the start of 4D bioprinting, whereby bioprinted elements can change after reacting with the environment.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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