New Insights into the Development of In Situ Bioprinting for Tissue Engineering

Dear Colleagues,

Bioprinting has provided several advantages to traditional tissue engineering approaches for fabricating scaffolds for organ/tissue regeneration due to controlled biomaterials processing. Nevertheless, this technology suffers from several limitations when considering its clinical application, such as scaffold handling difficulties, risk of contamination, need for a maturation period in a bioreactor and shape/morphology of the bioprinted construct that does not perfectly match with the defect site. For these reasons, in the last few years, in situ bioprinting has emerged as a promising alternative. It consists of the direct deposition of biological material into the patient, following the complex geometry of the anatomical defect. This approach guarantees an enhancement in the maturation and differentiation of the bioprinted constructs, since the patient’s body itself works as a bioreactor. Currently, the following two different approaches have been proposed: the hand-held approach, where a portable device with a bioprinting unit is used for the direct biomaterial deposition and the robotic approach, based on the use of a robotic manipulator with 3 or more degrees of freedom. The latter involves less human intervention and guarantees higher precision, thus allowing the regeneration of complex defects.

Therefore, this Special Issue on “New Insights into the Development of In Situ Bioprinting for Tissue Engineering” will focus on original research papers and comprehensive reviews, reporting the most innovative works in the in situ bioprinting field that deal with both the technological and biological aspects of this topic. Topics of interest for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Development of innovative robotic/handheld systems for in situ bioprinting;
• Path planning methods for robotic-based in situ biomaterial deposition;
• Combination of multiple bioprinting technologies to achieve multi-scale and multi-material in situ biofabrication;
• AI-based strategies for the severity assessment, localization and regeneration planning of anatomical defects;
• Development and optimization of biomaterials for in situ deposition and tissue regeneration.

Dr. Gabriele Maria Fortunato
Prof. Dr. Giovanni Vozzi
Guest Editors

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• in situ bioprinting
• robotic-based approach
• hand-held approach
• biomaterials for in situ tissue regeneration
• path planning methods