Bioprinting technologies are a group of computer driven techniques that allow the manufacturing of 3D tissue and ultimately organs by selectively dispensing bioinks formulation containing cells or combination of cells and biomaterials (normally hydrogels) in predesign strategies.
Several bioprinting techniques are available and different types of dispensing principles have been developed, namely extrusion-based, laser-based, inkjet or droplet-on-demand, acoustic and microfluidic-based bioprinting. With the maturation of these techniques, it is already possible to produce from simple tissues (e.g. skin) to complex organ-like structures used for drug screening (e.g. hepatic lobules and kidney convoluted tubules). These simplified organ-like units already show the potential of the bioprinting techniques, which might allow the development of fully functional organs in the future.
