Assessing printability of bioinks

Abstract Congenital or acquired tissue loss and dysfunction is an enormous socioeconomic burden for healthcare systems globally. Tissue engineering holds promise to repair or replace human tissues and organs in order to restore normal function. One facet of tissue engineering is three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting which has emerged as an attractive method for assembling living and nonliving biological materials into spatially controlled, precise, and well-defined structures. It is essential that bioinks have the desired functional and mechanical properties that closely match the tissue it is to replace. Therefore it is imperative to correlate process and print parameters and factors that affect printability with shape fidelity and print resolution of the final fabricated 3D construct.