Recent Advances in Extrusion-Based 3D Printing for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, has become significantly more commonplace in tissue engineering over the past decade, as a variety of new printing materials have been developed. In extrusion-based printing, materials are used for applications that range from cell free printing to cell-laden bioinks that mimic natural tissues. Beyond single tissue applications, multi-material extrusion based printing has recently been developed to manufacture scaffolds that mimic tissue interfaces. Despite these advances, some material limitations prevent wider adoption of the extrusion-based 3D printers currently available. This progress report provides an overview of this commonly used printing strategy, as well as insight into how this technique can be improved. As such, it is hoped that the prospective report guides the inclusion of more rigorous material characterization prior to printing, thereby facilitating cross-platform utilization and reproducibility.

Extrusion-based 3D printing has demonstrated significant promise for the fabrication of cell-free and cell-laden engineered tissues. This progress report discusses extrusion-based 3D printing and recent advances in this field with examples of how they are approaching biomedical engineering problems. These highlights illustrate the advancements that are leading the way for development, characterization, and design of materials for 3D printing.

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