Abstract

The concepts of the challenges for the developments of Bioprinting and Biofabrication

Makoto Nakamura, Professor, The University Of Toyama

After printing techniques have started to be used in tissue engineering, those researches came to be called “Bioprinting” or “Organ printing”. Printing technologies are highly sophisticated technologies which have been developed for a long time to print or position many types of ink materials onto designed positions as precisely and as efficiently as possible. As many of biological tissues, especially those of important organs, have significantly thick three-dimensional structures with various components such as various types of cells and various types of tissue components, printing technologies have a great potential for construct such tissues and organs. After noticing this potential of printing technologies, we have pursued to develop 3D Bioprinting and Biofabrication researches applying inkjet and micro-patterned cell culture techniques, under the catch phrase “Whether tissues and organs can be manufactured by machines?” In this talk, our challenges and experiences on biofabrication will be presented and the essential concepts on which our challenges have been based will be summarized in order to be followed towards the next developments.