Evaluation of bioprinter technologies

Since the first printing of biologics with cytoscribing as demonstrated by Klebe in 1986, three dimensional (3D) bioprinting has made a substantial leap forward, particularly in the last decade. It has been widely used in fabrication of living tissues for various application areas such as tissue engineering and regenerative medicine research, transplantation and clinics, pharmaceutics and high-throughput screening, and cancer research. As bioprinting has gained interest in the medical and pharmaceutical communities, the demand for bioprinters has risen substantially. A myriad of bioprinters have been developed at research institutions worldwide and several companies have emerged to commercialize advanced bioprinter technologies. This paper prefaces the evolution of the field of bioprinting and presents the first comprehensive review of existing bioprinter technologies. Here, a comparative evaluation is performed for bioprinters; limitations with the current bioprinter technologies are discussed thoroughly and future prospects of bioprinters are provided to the reader. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.