State of the art of solid freeform fabrication for soft and hard tissue engineering

Tissue engineering is an interdisciplinary field involving the combined efforts of cell biologists, engineers, material scientists, mathematicians and geneticists towards the development of biological substitutes to restore, maintain, or improve tissue functions. It has emerged as a rapidly expanding field to address the organ shortage problem. Advanced solid freeform fabrication techniques are now being developed to fabricate scaffolds with controlled architecture for tissue engineering. These techniques combine computer-aided design (CAD) with computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) tools to produce three-dimensional structures layer-by-layer in a multitude of materials. This paper introduces the concept of tissue engineering assisted by computer. Different solid freeform fabrication techniques for tissue engineering are described and their advantages and disadvantages discussed with great detail. Novel fabrication procedures, such as alginate rapid prototyping and cell printing, are also presented opening new and exciting possibilities within the tissue engineering field.