Digital Bioprinting

Solid-Freeform Fabrication technology allows 3D-printing of arbitrarily shaped structures, layer by layer, directly from electronic blueprints. While this technology has been around for over two decades, it is only recently that this process is being explored for tissue engineering. In particular, new developments in multi-material printing may allow these compact “fabbers” to move from printing custom implants and scaffolds to direct in-situ printing of live heterogeneous tissue. If broadly accepted, this technology can profoundly change the way we fabricate, use, and engineer tissue constructs. This talk will focus on our experience with the open-source Fab@Home project and its use in printing a variety of biological and materials and non-biological integrated systems. The talk will conclude with some of the opportunities that this technology offers for moving from traditional biomaterials to digital tissue constructs.