Current Perspectives on Printing Technology for Biomedical Applications

Bioprinting is an innovative and essential technology that has created a revolutionary impact on both medical and pharmaceutical sciences and gained considerable interest worldwide. The term “Bioprinting” refers to the contemporaneous printing of living cells and biomaterials (via execution of various bioink printing methods) in a stipulated layer-by-layer stacking pattern in predefined locations using a computer-assisted design program (CAD) and manufacturing (CAM) blueprints process for the fabrication of biocompatible constructs [1]. It has wide implications in the field of biomedicine and pharmaceutics such as regenerative medicine, tissue and organ fabrication, designing implants, pharmaceutical research: high throughput drug screening and drug delivery, creating anatomical models and constructing customized prosthetics, toxicology, transplantation and cancer research [2]. Apart from these benefits, the major issue of 3D-bioprinting is the static and inert nature of 3D printed biomaterial or constructs. 4D-bioprinting is a novel technique where the fourth dimension, “time”, is integrated along with 3D-bioprinting [3]. Using 4D-bioprinting, the fabricated material can change their shape and/or function on-demand and over time, which may have great advantage for developing scaffolds that only become active when they encounter particular environments [4].