Application of inkjet in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine: Development of inkjet 3D biofabrication technology

Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine are hoped as the most promising advanced medicine of 21st century. Both are the most promising and reasonable approaches to save patients with organ failure, instead of transplantation. To date, simple and thin tissues have been successfully engineered such as skin and cartilage, however, a number of challenges are needed in engineering other thicker, larger and more complicated tissues and finally available organs. Biological tissues are composed of several types of cells and biomaterials, and have 3D architectures with micro-scaled resolution and macro-scaled mass. To engineer such tissues, printing technologies are promising, because the printer must print pictures on macro-scaled papers simultaneously with micro-scaled resolution. Then, we have developed 2D to 3D biofabrication using inkjet and hydrogel. 3D bioprinter has been developed using inkjet by our selves and several structures with hydrogel and living cells were fabricated. In this presentation, we introduce our progress of the research and development using inkjet technology. Digital fabrication including inkjet will provide promising and innovative approaches for sophisticated tissue engineering.