Abstract

3D Printing of Biomimetic Scaffolds for Tissue Regeneration

Jerry Fuh, Professor, National University of Singapore

With the advance of 3D Printing (3DP) technologies in the past 20 years, bio-printing has been increasingly accepted by clinicians and academia for possible use in tissue engineering applications. But the most successful biomedical applications still lie on printing of intricate medical models for surgery planning. The designs and development of functional 3D human tissue for medical research and therapeutic applications in which organs and body parts are built using inkjet techniques are still in its infant stage. Printing of scaffolds, organs and layers of living cells onto a gel medium or sugar matrix and slowly building up to form 3D structures aiming for tissue repair is still been challenging by many clinicians and doctors and thus facing difficulties especially for new FDA-approved medical procedures. 3DP can potentially replicate or mimic the internal structures of normal tissues which play important roles in their biological functions, e.g. musculoskeletal tissues, where specific internal structures and microstructures confer important functional characteristics that allow normal functioning of the tissues to occur. 3D printing technologies applied to develop viable and prosthetic replacement tissues and implants for human clinical applications will be an exciting and new area of biomedical research and development in the next decade. In this talk, the promising bio-printing techniques based on the Drop-on-demand (DoD) and electrohydrodynamic jetting (E-jetting) aim to create more bioactive functionally-graded coating for implants and biomimetic 3D scaffolding for soft tissue repair/re-generation will be introduced. Case examples on meniscus, cartilage and tendon tissue repair will also be discussed.