....to the goal of printing a full-sized, functional organ.
The researchers also developed open-source designs so that nearly anyone, from medical labs to high school science classes, can build and have access to low-cost, high-performance 3D bioprinters.
Here,
3D bioprinting of collagen to rebuild components of the human heart
Science 02 Aug 2019:
Vol. 365, Issue 6452, pp. 482-487
DOI: 10.1126/science.aav905
We have used the human heart for proof of concept; however, FRESH v2.0 printing of collagen is a platform that can build advanced tissue scaffolds for a wide range of organ systems. There are still many challenges to overcome, such as generating the billions of cells required to 3D-bioprint large tissues, achieving manufacturing scale, and creating a regulatory process for clinical translation (23).
Although the 3D bioprinting of a fully functional organ is yet to be achieved, we now have the ability to build constructs that start to recapitulate the structural, mechanical, and biological properties of native tissues.