A study published in Nature is paving the way for more effective use of biocompatible materials, particularly in restoring cartilage. Cartilage is notoriously difficult to restore, as it requires a balance of mechanical strength and flexibility that are difficult to reproduce.

Researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands have successfully built 3d printed scaffolds to increase the success rate of an experimental method used to help Type 1 diabetes patients.

Researchers at Drexel university of Philadelphia and Tsinghua University of Beijing are claiming that using embryonic stem cells combined with hydrogel scaffolds, they can finally print micro-organs. These micro-organs can be anything from brain tissue, heart cells or bone.

Sweden Team led by Paul Gatenholm at the Wallenberg Wood Science Center has discovered scaffolds to regenerate Cartilages using 3D printed technology. These 3D printed chondrocytes when implanted in living mice, resulted in cartilage production. The team is currently working to explore it's use in human clinical trials.

Designers at Nottingham Trent University, UK, have discovered microstructure of a 3D-printed bone scaffold. This new scaffold is believed to contain all minerals like natural bone and will dissolve as patient recovers, thereby creating a bridge for tissue regeneration.

Researchers at the University of Florida have developed 3D printed Gel made of acrylic acid polymer. This Gel will acts as a scaffold to hold the structure in place during the printing process, thereby, establishing the future of 3D Printed Organs.

Scientists in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), California are testing sponges made with the key ingredient of baking soda as a way of capturing carbon emissions. This project is being funded by UK government as i they believe it will greatly help in reducing Global warming with much lower costs.

Nano Dimesnion has announced that it has filed patent application too U.S Patent and Trademark Office for the 3D printing of stem cells. The patent discloses it will be using MRI and CT scans to print biological structure of the tissue or organ using 3D bioprinter and bioink materials. The patent came after concept of 3D printing stem cells weeks back.

Scaffolds offer ways to repair damaged tissues and can allow tissue and cartilages to regrow. With Inkjet 3DP and SLS being the commonly used powder-based tools in biomedical engineering applications, recent advances in mass manufacturing are expected to have an impact on fabricate tissues and biological scaffolds. A study published by the National Institute for Materials Science does highlight the significance of this task.

Students at Rutgers University-Camde, New Jersey, are working with bioprinters for the first time to develop scaffolds for tissues. They are characterizing the materials of scaffolding to determine how applicable they'll be with the cells used to create tissues. On other hand, David Salas-de la Cruz, an assistant professor of chemistry is interested in biodegradable biomaterials.

American Process Inc. (API), an Atlanta-based company dedicated to the development of renewable biomass materials, has entered into a Joint Development Agreement (JDA) with Swansea University Medical Schoolin Wales to develop 3D printed cartilage to be used for facial reconstruction. Under this JDA, cells will be blended with various formulations of nano-cellulose scaffold material and 3D-printed into tissues for reconstructive surgery.

Professor Rashid Abu Al-Rub and his team at Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates is developing methods to change the internal geometric structure of familiar plastics, metals, ceramics and composites. Using the 3D Printing Technology as the only solution, they seek to revolutionize the existing 3D printing patterns and provide light-weight but strong materials for applications.

Spineart has announced that it received CE marking for its new JULIET lumbar inter-body systems with Ti-LIFE Technologythat isultra-compact, sterile packed and bar-coded for increased safety, procedure compliance and cost-efficiency. The Ti-Life micro-porous scaffold mimics the bone trabecular structure and features interconnected pores of 600 μm to 700 μm and an overall porosity of 70-75% designed to enable cell colonization and promote bone in-growth.

Amy Karle, from Artist in Residence at Autodesk has used CAD design and 3D Printing to create scaffolds in support of cell growth into certain forms by which 3D Printed framework for tissue generation can be made. She makes her own 3D Printed material using polyethylene (glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) hydrogel and 3D Printing it by Ember 3D Printer.

The South Korean company, iMakr Med Platform, recently revealed their new 3D Printer called the Rokit Invivo Hybrid Bio 3D Printer, which is set to be sold at $34,000 USD and functions as the first hybrid modular bioprinter. The printer contains Invivo gel that helps constructing 3D tissue scaffolds which can be used for potential transplantation.

3D Bioprinting is being used in laboratories to produce hearts, livers, kidneys, etc. and no doubt, will be printed in reality for organ transplantation in real patients. But this on the other side, has increased the risk of black market and the ways bad guys will be utilizing these 3D Printed Organs. Since these organs will be available for normal people easily, criminals will find ways to make it not so.

This year’s 3D Scaffolds Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award in the Transformational Healthcare category have been grabbed by Singapore-based company at the Frost & Sullivan Singapore Excellence Awards. Osteopore International for their innovation in 3D Printed Scaffolding that deals with healing of tissue within the human body as well as regeneration. Set up in 1999, Osteopore has been pioneering methods of 3D Printing to provide range of innovations as well as customer satisfaction.

Students at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich and the Technical University of Munich formed up a team called Team BiotINK and have discovered a way of 3d printing without going through scaffold formation. Using ultimaker 2+ 3d printer and biotink with streptavidin, the 3d printing can now be done without scaffolds and hence reducing the cost of 3d printing.

One roadblock to 3D printing complete, functional organs lies in our inability to ensure the engineered tissue will be well nourished with an accessible blood supply.  Presently we have seen attempts at recreating arteries and veins, but successfully ensuring blood flow deep into tissue to the level of the capillary beds has proven elusive. A group of bioengineers and clinicians have pioneered a technique allowing them to print a fibrin patch containing organized endothelial cells, the cellular linining of blood vessels. Not only did the printed patch enhance blood vessel formation, but the engineered vascular tissue actually integrated with the host's own vasculature, improving tissue perfusion of damaged tissues. This research provides a novel technique that may permit printing of larger blocks of tissue and even organs.

A team of researchers from Penn State University, with the support from National Institutes of Health (NIH), have developed a method called 3D near-field electrospinning, or 3DNFES that combines 3D printing and electrospinning, which uses an electric charge to spin nanometer threads from a polymer solution or melt. This new method can be used to place single micrometer-scale fibers, on several different substrates, in a predefined spatial organization, and therefore create framework scaffolds for living tissue.

A group of researchers from Japan’s Osaka University have developed a new bioprinting ink using a method based on hydrogelation mediated by horseradish peroxidase, an enzyme that can create cross-links between phenyl groups of an added polymer in the presence of the oxidant hydrogen peroxide. This bioprinting ink will be better substitute of Sodium Alginate as it will allow 3D Printing of more variety of scaffolds.

Researchers from Nagasaki University in Japan are working on scaffold-free approaches for an artificial trachea by assessing the circumferential tracheal replacement using scaffold-free trachea-like grafts, generated from isolated cells in an inbred animal model. Regenova 3D bioprinter from Cyfuse Biomedical was used to assemble multicellular spheroids in a tube-shaped artificial trachea.

Researchers at Ghent University have developed a 3D bioprinted model of a scaffold from PLA that more accurately replicates the size, porosity and mechanical and biochemical properties of peritoneal metastasis to treat Cancer. Cancerous cells are then cultivated for testing after which they implanted their model in the peritoneal cavities of a mice to test its working in vivo.

Researchers from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) in Barcelona developed a new method of designing porous scaffolds for FDM 3D printing using a dual-extruder Sigma 3D printer from BCN3D to fabricate three sample scaffolds out of PLA, and then measuring their pore size and total porosity. They applied their model to a disc shape and defined three different variables: Distance between parallel planes; Number of base points for columns on each plane and Radius of each column.

A team from the Polymer Materials for Tissue Engineering and Transplantology Laboratory of Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) in a joint project with researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences and Pavlov First St. Petersburg State Medical University, has developed innovative, polymeric medical materials that can be used to fix human organs that have undergone trauma. The team have created a porous, 3D material made of chitosan – a bone tissue analog – and collagen which can mimic the body tissues and prevent itself from being rejected by the immunity of human body.

A collaborative team of researchers from the National Taiwan University Hospital, the China Medical University Hospital, and Asia University have created a new bone substitute- Calcium Silicate Bone Scaffold that have both osteoconductive and osetoinductive potential to be used for bone grafts/repair required in people suffering from bone defects and disorders around the globe. The team explored the effects of various loading methods on novel grafting material bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2), which was loaded with a mesoporous calcium silicate (MesoCS) scaffold created with FDM 3D printing on a 3D bioprinter from GeSiM.

Once a person suffers myocardial infarction or heart attack in local language, some part of heart is destroyed permanently at cellular level which cannot recover or regenerate. However, scientists have developed 3D printed cardiac patches that can be used to repair hearts damaged by heart attacks, but only about five have been produced worldwide. A group of researchers 3D printed a world-first stretchable microfiber scaffold with a hexagonal design to which added specialized stem cells called iPS-Cardiomyocytes, which began to contract unstimulated on the scaffold. The work has been demonstrated on the actual hearts of pigs and being planned for human trials.

A team of engineers and medical researchers from the University of Minnesota (UMN) are working on creating Neural Scaffold that can help patients with spinal cord injury alleviate pain and gain control over functions like bladder, bowel, and muscle control again. The prototype contains 3D Printed Silicone Guide acts as a scaffold, over which neuronal stem cells are 3D Printed, which then later differentiate into neurons, and then it is implanted into the injured part of spinal cord.

Liqun Ning, a post-doctoral fellow in the Tissue Engineering Research Group at the University of Saskatchewan, is working on 3D Printing Scaffolds of Schwann Cells, the supporting cells in the nervous system that can force nerve cells to grow properly, which were created using the Canadian Light Source center at the University of Saskatchewan. The scaffolds are expected to stimulate new, healthy nerve cells to grow. The results of the study show that the 3D printed scaffolds can promote the alignment of the Schwann cells and provide cues to direct the extension of dorsal root ganglion along the printed strands.

Politecnico di Torino student, Viola Sgarminato in his thesis, used a combination of electrospinning and 3D printing with an EnvisionTEC 3D-Bioplotter to develop scaffolds that would promote healing by electrically stimulating skin cells. These wound repairing and dressing scaffolds were then seeded with cells, which were then evaluated 24 and 72 hours later. The composite wound dressings were also examined using a scanning electron microscope to verify the adhesion of the fibers to the scaffold, and good results were shown: even if subjected to mechanical stretching, the fibers remained attached to the substrate.

A team from the Research Center for Nano-Biomaterials at Sichuan University worked on four groups of scaffolds, namely: PCL, PCL/PVAc, PCL/HA and PCL/PVAc/HA. By 3D Printing them on 3D Bioprinter V2.0 (manufactured by Hangzhou Regenovo Biotechnology Co., Ltd, China), they revealed that although they had almost similar porosity, the mechanical properties were different. PCL/PVAc/HA scaffold was selected the winner with more favorable characteristics during in vitro cell culture experiment and in vivo bone formation.

Christen Boyer, a Bioprinting engineer and recent Postdoctoral Fellow at LSU Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, along with vascular cell biologist, tissue engineer, and professor at LSU Health Sciences Center, Steven Alexander; have developed a new technology to 3D Print Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) Medical Devices. The method generates biologically compatible 3D printing scaffolds that support cell engraftment because of the high level of protein binding, which is a result of the stabilization process. Working along with Hrishikesh Samant, a transplant surgeon at LSU Health, Boyer and Alexander came up with a novel crosslinked PVA (XL-PVA) 3D printed stent infused with collagen, human placental mesenchymal stem cells (PMSCs), and cholangiocytes. The customized living biliary stents have clinical applications in the setting of malignant and benign bile duct obstructions.

An international Team of Bioengineers from the Bio-Microrobotics Laboratory of the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST) partnered with the Ajou University and Microsystems Lab of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), using the Nanoscribe Photonic Professional system to create microstructure scaffolds for the Cochlear implant. Accompanied by a high-precision 3D printed steroid reservoir with a 2D MEMS-based electrode array, the medical device- “Germany’s Nanoscribe” is meant to allow patients to hear better—and by avoiding insertion trauma, preserves what hearing ability they still possess. The implant is designed to reduce the damage of residual hearing against electrode insertion trauma.