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3D Printing Techniques
3D printing for the manufacturing of artificial organs has been a major topic of study in biological engineering. As the rapid manufacturing techniques entailed by 3D printing become increasingly efficient, their applicability in artificial organ synthesis has grown more evident. Some of the primary benefits of 3D printing lie in its capability of mass-producing scaffold structures, as well as the high degree of anatomical precision in scaffold products. This allows for the creation of constructs that more effectively resemble the microstructure of a natural organ or tissue structure. Organ printing using 3D printing can be conducted using a variety of techniques, each of which confers specific advantages that can be suited to particular types of organ production.

Drop-based bioprinting (Inkjet)
Drop-based bioprinting makes cellular developments utilizing droplets of a assigned material, which has oftentimes been combined with a cell line. Upon contact with the substrate surface, each bead starts to polymerize, shaping a bigger structure as droplets start to coalesce. Polymerization is started by calcium particles on the substrate, which diffuse into the liquified bioink and permit for the arrangement of a strong gel. Drop-based bioprinting is commonly utilized due to its productive speed, in spite of the fact that this viewpoint makes it less appropriate for more complicated organ structures.

Fused Deposition Modeling
Fused deposition modeling (FDM) is more common and inexpensive compared to selective laser sintering. This printer uses a printhead that is similar in structure to an inkjet printer, however, ink is not used. Plastic beads are heated at high temperature and released from the printhead as it moves, building the object in thin layers. A variety of plastics can be used with FDM printers. Additionally, most of the parts printed by FDM are typically composed from the same thermoplastics that are utilized in tradition injection molding or machining techniques. Due to this, these parts have analogous durability, mechanical properties, and stability characteristics. Precision control allows for a consistent release amount and specific location deposition for each layer contributing to the shape. As the heated plastic is deposited from the printhead, it fuses or bonds to the layers below. As each layer cools, they harden and gradually take hold of the solid shape intended to be created as more layers are contributed to the structure.

Selective Laser Sintering
Selective laser sintering (SLS) uses powdered material as the substrate for printing new objects. SLS can be used to create metal, plastic, and ceramic objects. This technique uses a laser, that is controlled by a computer, as the power source to sinter powdered material. The laser traces a cross-section of the shape of the desired object in the powder, which fuses it together into a solid form. A new layer of powder is then laid down and the process repeats itself. Building each layer with every new application of powder, one by one, to form the entirety of the object. One of the advantages of SLS printing is that it requires very little additional tooling, i.e. sanding, once the object is printed. Recent advances in organ printing using SLS, include 3D constructs of craniofacial implants as well as scaffolds for cardiac tissue engineering.

Printing Materials
Printing materials must fit a broad spectrum of criteria, one of the foremost being biocompatibility. The resulting scaffolds formed by 3D printed materials should be physically and chemically appropriate for cell proliferation. Biodegradability is another important factor, and insures that the artificially formed structure can be broken down upon successful transplantation, to be replaced by a completely natural cellular structure. Due to the nature of 3D printing, materials used must be customizable and adaptable, being suited to wide array of cell types and structural conformations.

Natural Polymers
Materials for 3D printing usually consist of alginate or fibrin polymers that have been integrated with cellular adhesion molecules, which support the physical attachment of cells. Such polymers are specifically designed to maintain structural stability and be receptive to cellular integration. The term "bioink" has been used as a broad classification of materials that are compatible with 3D bioprinting. Hydrogel alginates have emerged as one of the most commonly used materials in organ printing research, as they are highly customizable, and can be fine-tuned to simulate certain mechanical and biological properties characteristic of natural tissue. The ability of hydrogels to be tailored to specific needs allows them to be used as an adaptable scaffold material, that are suited for a variety of tissue or organ structures and physiological conditions. A major challenge in the use of alginate is its stability and slow degradation, which makes it difficult for the artificial gel scaffolding to be broken down and replaced with the implanted cells' own extracellular matrix. Alginate hydrogel that is suitable for extrusion printing is also often less structurally and mechanically sound; however, this issue can be mediated by the incorporation of other biopolymers, such as nanocellulose, to provide greater stability. The properties of the alginate or mixed-polymer bioink are tunable and can be altered for different applications and types of organs.

Other natural polymers that have been used for tissue and 3D organ printing, include chitosan, hydroxyapatite (HA), collagen, and gelatin. Gelatin is a thermosensitive polymer with properties exhibiting excellent wear solubility, biodegradability, biocompatibility, as well as a low immunologic rejection. These qualities are advantageous and result in high acceptance of the 3D bioprinted organ when implanted in vivo.

Synthetic Polymers
Synthetic polymers are human made through chemical reactions of monomers. Their mechanical properties are favorable in that their molecular weights can be regulated from low to high based on differing requirements. However, their lack of functional groups and structural complexity has limited their usage in organ printing. Current synthetic polymers with excellent 3D printability and in vivo tissue compatibility, include polyethylene glycol (PEG), poly(lactic-glycolic acid) (PLGA), and polyurethane (PU). PEG is a biocompatible, nonimmunogenic synthetic polyether that has tunable mechanical properties for use in 3D bioprinting. Though PEG has been utilized in various 3D printing applications, the lack of cell-adhesive domains has limited further use in organ printing. PLGA, a synthetic copolymer, is widely familiar in living creatures, such as animals, humans, plants, and microorganisms. PLGA is used in conjunction with other polymers to create different material systems, including PLGA-gelatin, PLGA-collagen, all of which enhance mechanical properties of the material, biocompatible when placed in vivo, and have tunable biodegradability. PLGA has most often been used in printed constructs for bone, liver, and other large organ regeneration efforts. Lastly, PU is unique in that it can be classified into two groups: biodegradable or non-biodegradable. It has been used in the field of bioprinting due to its excellent mechanical and bioinert properties. An application of PU would be inanimate artificial hearts, however, using the existing 3D bioprinters this polymer cannot be printed. A new elastomeric PU was created comprising of PEG and polycaprolactone (PCL) monomers. This new material exhibits excellent biocompatibility, biodegradability, bioprintability, and biostability for use in complex bioartificial organ printing and manufacturing. Due to high vascular and neural network construction, this material can be applied to organ printing in a variety of complex ways, such as the brain, heart, lung, and kidney.

Natural-Synthetic Hybrid Polymers
Natural-synthetic hybrid polymers are based on the synergic effect between synthetic and biopolymeric constituents. Gelatin-methacryloyl (GelMA) has become a popular biomaterial in the field of bioprinting. GelMA has shown it has viable potential as a bioink material due to its suitable biocompatibility and readily tunable psychochemical properties. Hyaluronic acid (HA)-PEG is another natural-synthetic hybrid polymer that has proven to be very successful in bioprinting applications. HA combined with synthetic polymers aid in obtaining more stable structures with high cell viability and limited loss in mechanical properties after printing. A recent application of HA-PEG in bioprinting is the creation of artificial liver. Lastly, a series of biodegradable polyurethane (PU)-gelatin hybrid polymers with tunable mechanical properties and efficient degradation rates have been implemented in organ printing. This hybrid has the ability to print complicated structures such as a nose-shaped construct.

All of the polymers described above have the potential to be manufactured into implantable, bioartificial organs for purposes including, but not limited to, customized organ restoration, drug screening, as well as metabolic model analysis.

Cell Sources
The creation of a complete organ often requires incorporation of a variety of different cell types, arranged in distinct and patterned ways. One advantage of 3D-printed organs, compared to traditional transplants, is the potential to use cells derived from the patient to make the new organ. This significantly decreases the likelihood of transplant rejection, and may remove the need for immunosuppressive drugs after transplant, which would reduce the health risks of transplants. However, since it may not always be possible to collect all the needed cell types, it may be necessary to collect adult stem cells or induce pluripotency in collected tissue. This involves resource-intensive cell growth and differentiation and comes with its own set of potential health risks, since cell proliferation in a printed organ occurs outside the body and requires external application of growth factors. However, the ability of some tissues to self-organize into differentiated structures may provide a way to simultaneously construct the tissues and form distinct cell populations, improving the efficacy and functionality of organ printing.

Pharmaceutical Research
3D organ printing technology permits the fabrication of high degrees of complexity with great reproducibility, in a fast and cost-effective manner. 3D printing has been used in pharmaceutical research and fabrication, providing a transformative system allowing precise control of droplet size and dose, personalized medicine, and the production of complex drug-release profiles. This technology calls for implantable drug delivery devices, in which the drug is injected into the 3D printed organ and is released once in vivo. Also, organ printing has been used as a transformative tool for in vitro testing. The printed organ can be utilized in discovery and dosage research upon drug-release factors.