Hoe staat het met 3D-bioprinten van kraakbeen?

Five years ago in this journal we described our research into 3D bioprinting of ear cartilage for the purpose of making personalized cartilage implants for facial reconstruction.

3D bioprinting makes it possible to place living cells in a biodegradable scaffold to give a 3D structure to the tissue. We are able to develop a hybrid auricular cartilage implant model. However, Long term in vivo experiments are needed to test preclinical applicability. Nevertheless, the work presented in our studies provides a potential strategy for the use of biofabricated tissue constructs in the clinic.

In short, 3D bioprinting is still in its infancy and has no direct clinical application yet. Before the step to the clinic can be made, the technique still has to go through a preclinical phase in which it is investigated how the 3D printed tissue would appear in vivo.

Conflict of interest and financial support: none declared.