Bioprinting: To Make Ourselves Anew

"Bioprinting: To Make Ourselves Anew describes how bioprinting emerged from 3D printing and details the accomplishments and challenges in bioprinting tissues of cartilage, skin, bone, muscle, neuromuscular junctions, liver, heart, lung, and kidney. It explains how scientists are attempting to provide these bioprinted tissues with a blood supply and the ability to carry nerve signals so that the tissues might be used for transplantation into persons with diseased or damaged organs. The book presents all the common terms in the bioprinting field and clarifies their meaning using plain language. The reader will learn about bioink-a bioprinting material containing living cells and supportive biomaterials. Additionally, readers will become at ease with concepts such as fugitive inks (sacrificial inks used to make channels for blood flow), extracellular matrices (the biological environment surrounding cells), decellularization (the process of isolating cells from their native environment), hydrogels (water-based substances that can substitute for the extracellular matrix), rheology (the flow properties of a bioink), bioreactors (containers to provide the environment cells need to thrive and multiply). Further vocabulary that will become familiar includes diffusion (passive movement of oxygen and nutrients from regions of high concentration to regions of low concentration), stem cells (cells with the potential to develop into different bodily cell types), progenitor cells (early descendants of stem cells), gene expression (the process by which proteins develop from instructions in our DNA), and growth factors (substances-often proteins-that stimulate cell growth, proliferation, and differentiation). The book contains an extensive glossary for quick reference"--