Engineering of artificial lymph node

Synthetic immunology has been a topic of research in both the immunology and tissue engineering fields. Since the first successful generation of an artificial lymph node (LN) in vivo by implantation of a collagen scaffold with stromal cells has been reported, tissue engineering of artificial LNs using several biological and engineering techniques has started. Recently, the advance engineering approaches using several manufacturing machines, including three-dimensional (3D) printers, 3D fabrication and assembling machines, have been addressed. Such approaches are in general called “Biofabrication”. As the use of machines has several potential capabilities, such as super-manufacturing beyond the capability of humans, direct tissue manufacturing by additive manufacturing and computer aided tissue engineering by applying high efficiency of the computer and digital technologies, the strategy of biofabrication can provide a potential of breakthrough to construct highly sophisticated 3D scaffolds and to generate several complex 3D tissues and organs. Based on this concept, we have ever developed several machines for this purpose such as an inkjet 3D bioprinter to construct complex and multi-composite 3D structures. In the present work, we applied this strategy to rationally design and construct artificial LNs. This research is still in its infancy, and it requires several improvements in terms of new technology. Here, we introduced our struggles and current works towards production of practical artificial LNs.