Scaffold Based or Scaffold Free Bioprinting: Competing or Complementing Approaches?

Abstract

Bioprinting is an emerging technology to fabricate artificial tissues and organs through additive manufacturing of living cells in a tissuesspecific pattern by stacking them layer by layer. Two major approaches have been proposed in the literature: bioprinting cells in a scaffold matrix to support cell proliferation and growth, and bioprinting cells without using a scaffold structure. Despite great progress, particularly in scaffoldbased approaches along with recent significant attempts, printing largescale tissues and organs is still elusive. This paper demonstrates recent significant attempts in scaffoldbased and scaffoldfree tissue printing approaches, discusses the advantages and limitations of both approaches, and presents a conceptual framework for bioprinting of scaleup tissue by complementing the benefits of these approaches.