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Item Comparison of Biomaterial-Dependent and -Independent Bioprinting Methods for Cardiovascular Medicine(Elsevier, 2017) Moldovan, Leni; Babbey, Clifford; Murphy, Michael; Moldovan, Nicanor I.; Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Engineering and TechnologyThere is an increasing need of human organs for transplantation, of alternatives to animal experimentation, and of better in vitro tissue models for drug testing. All these needs create unique opportunities for the development of novel and powerful tissue engineering methods, among which the 3D bioprinting is one of the most promising. However, after decades of incubation, ingenuous efforts, early success and much anticipation, biomaterial-dependent 3D bioprinting, although shows steady progress, is slow to deliver the expected clinical results. For this reason, alternative ‘scaffold-free’ 3D bioprinting methods are developing in parallel at an accelerated pace. In this opinion paper we discuss comparatively the two approaches, with specific examples drawn from the cardiovascular field. Moving the emphasis away from competition, we show that the two platforms have similar goals but evolve in complementary technological niches. We conclude that the biomaterial-dependent bioprinting is better suited for tasks requiring faster, larger, anatomically-true, cell-homogenous and matrix-rich constructs, while the scaffold-free biofabrication is more adequate for cell-heterogeneous, matrix-poor, complex and smaller constructs, but requiring longer preparation time.Item Of balls, inks and cages: Hybrid biofabrication of 3D tissue analogs(2019) Moldovan, Nicanor I.; Moldovan, Leni; Raghunath, Michael; Biomedical Engineering, School of Engineering and TechnologyThe overarching principle of three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting is the placing of cells or cell clusters in the 3D space to generate a cohesive tissue microarchitecture that comes close to in vivo characteristics. To achieve this goal, several technical solutions are available, generating considerable combinatorial bandwidth: (i) Support structures are generated first, and cells are seeded subsequently; (ii) alternatively, cells are delivered in a printing medium, so-called “bioink,” that contains them during the printing process and ensures shape fidelity of the generated structure; and (iii) a “scaffold-free” version of bioprinting, where only cells are used and the extracellular matrix is produced by the cells themselves, also recently entered a phase of accelerated development and successful applications. However, the scaffold-free approaches may still benefit from secondary incorporation of scaffolding materials, thus expanding their versatility. Reversibly, the bioink-based bioprinting could also be improved by adopting some of the principles and practices of scaffold-free biofabrication. Collectively, we anticipate that combinations of these complementary methods in a “hybrid” approach, rather than their development in separate technological niches, will largely increase their efficiency and applicability in tissue engineering.