Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States of America.
Division of Biomedical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5A9, Canada.
Biofabrication. 2021 Apr 8;13(3). doi: 10.1088/1758-5090/abe7ab.
Extrusion bioprinting has been widely used to extrude continuous filaments of bioink (or the mixture of biomaterial and living cells), layer-by-layer, to build three-dimensional constructs for biomedical applications. In extrusion bioprinting, printability is an important parameter used to measure the difference between the designed construct and the one actually printed. This difference could be caused by the extrudability of printed bioink and/or the structural formability and stability of printed constructs. Although studies have reported in characterizing printability based on the bioink properties and printing process, the concept of printability is often confusingly and, sometimes, conflictingly used in the literature. The objective of this perspective is to define the printability for extrusion bioprinting in terms of extrudability, filament fidelity, and structural integrity, as well as to review the effect of bioink properties, bioprinting process, and construct design on the printability. Challenges related to the printability of extrusion bioprinting are also discussed, along with recommendations for improvements.
挤出式生物打印已广泛用于挤出生物墨水（或生物材料和活细胞的混合物）的连续长丝，以逐层构建用于生物医学应用的三维结构。在挤出式生物打印中，可打印性是一个重要的参数，用于衡量设计的构建体与实际打印的构建体之间的差异。这种差异可能是由打印生物墨水的可挤出性和/或打印构建体的结构可成形性和稳定性引起的。尽管已经有研究报道了基于生物墨水特性和打印工艺来表征可打印性，但在文献中，可打印性的概念经常被混淆，有时甚至相互矛盾。本观点的目的是根据可挤出性、长丝保真度和结构完整性来定义挤出式生物打印的可打印性，并回顾生物墨水特性、生物打印工艺和构建体设计对可打印性的影响。还讨论了与挤出式生物打印的可打印性相关的挑战，并提出了改进建议。
