Organ printing: Past, present and future

Organ printing technology could be defined as an automated, robotic and computer-aided layer by layer additive biofabrication of functional 3D tissue and organ constructs using living tissue spheroids as building blocks. The concept of organ printing has been introduced a decade ago as a potentially superior alternative to conventional solid scaffold-based tissue engineering. The organ printing technology consists of three main steps: (i) pre-processing or design of blueprint for bioprinting of human organ; (ii) processing or actual 3D bioprinting using bioink or self-assembling tissue spheroids, biopaper or bioprintable, biocompatible and sacrificial hydrogel and bioprinter or automatic computer-aided robotic dispenser; and finally, (iii) post-processing or bioreactor-based accelerated tissue maturation. During last decade 3D bioprinting technology has been advances and broadly recognized a new research paradigm and new exciting research direction in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Moreover, commercialization of 3D bioprinting technology is already an ongoing process. The design of next generation of 3D bioprinters and industrial scale complete organ biofabrication line will be presented and discussed.