Bioprinting has emerged as a revolutionary methodology for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Based on free-form fabrication principles, it enables the bottom-up assembly of living building blocks into customized three-dimensional structures that can be subsequently be used for in vitro tissue engineering. Bioprinting provides a high degree of control over cellular heterogeneity and structural complexity, which are essential features required for engineering structurally sophisticated tissue constructs. Conventional bioprinting technologies can be categorized into droplet jetting-, filament extrusion-, and vat polymerization-based approaches. Bioprinted materials are typically cell-laden hydrogels, or bioinks, which ideally mimic the biophysical and biochemical features of the extracellular matrix.

Despite the considerable progress in bioprinting various tissue/organ models, there remain some enduring challenges, such as the demands for higher feature resolution, bioinks with physiologically relevant cell densities, and the incorporation of functional vascular networks. The most recent advances in bioinks and bioprinting have greatly added to the capability of bioprinting to address these issues. One major effort has been the expansion of the bioink palette available to the bioprinting community. Apart from the typical cell-laden bioinks based on homogeneous hydrogel solutions, researchers have also developed novel bioinks based on cells alone (e.g., single cells, cell spheroids), cellularized microgels, cellularized porous hydrogels and other formulations. Moreover, the most recent progress in bioprinting techniques has opened up new opportunities for bioprinting, such as bioprinting in a suspension bath (either in acellular or cellular form), volumetric bioprinting with extremely high speed, noninvasive in vivo bioprinting and bioprinting in space.

The Research Topic aims to highlight the latest advances in the field of bioprinting, particularly those with innovative forms of bioink formulations and bioprinting process. Original Research articles and Perspectives are welcome for submission. Reviews that highlight the unconventional bioinks and bioprinting techniques are also welcome. Themes to be featured in this collection may include (but not limited to):

· Bioink and biomaterial ink development (e.g., new chemistry in bioinks and biomaterial inks, composite or organic-inorganic bioinks and biomaterial inks, material-free bioinks, conductive bioinks, breathing bioinks etc.)

· Bioprinting technology development (e.g., suspension bioprinting, volumetric bioprinting, in vivo/in situ bioprinting, hybrid bioprinting combining different technologies, and new enabling techniques based on magnetic, acoustic, and electric forces etc.)

· Applications in tissue engineering (e.g., thick tissue fabrication, 3D vascularization, heterogeneous tissue/organ models and particular tissue engineering etc.)

Keywords: Bioprinting, Bioinks, Biofabrication, Tissue engineering

Dr. Ouyang holds two Chinese patents numbered ZL201710499076.7 and ZL201710530224.7 on hydrogel fabrication.

Dr. Armstrong holds three patents numbered WO2017149296, WO2017187114, and WO2021019253 on bioprinting and hydrogel fabrication.

Dr. Highley holds patent US10828399B2 on bioprinting.

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