Bioprinting Human Organs

The provided sources offer a comprehensive overview of the current state and future trajectory of 3D bioprinting, as of mid-2025. They begin by establishing bioprinting as a rapidly advancing field, driven by the global organ shortage, and detail the three-phase workflow: pre-bioprinting (design and bioink preparation), bioprinting (layer-by-layer fabrication), and post-bioprinting (maturation in bioreactors). The texts compare various bioprinting modalities, like extrusion and inkjet, highlighting their strengths and limitations concerning resolution, speed, and cell viability, and emphasize the crucial role of bioinks—natural, synthetic, and decellularized—in achieving functional constructs. While acknowledging significant successes in printing simpler tissues such as skin and cartilage, and the revolutionary impact of bioprinted organoids on preclinical research, the sources extensively address the persistent challenges to whole-organ bioprinting, primarily vascularization, innervation, and scalability. They also discuss the regulatory and ethical considerations that will shape its adoption, and compare bioprinting to alternative solutions like xenotransplantation and artificial organs, concluding with expert forecasts on the timeline for clinical translation, underscoring the vital role of AI, 4D bioprinting, and interdisciplinary collaboration in advancing the field.

Research done with the help of artificial intelligence, and presented by two AI-generated hosts.