Bio-Inspired Hydrogels via 3D Bioprinting

Abstract

Many soft tissues of the human body such as cartilages, muscles, and ligaments are mainly composed of biological hydrogels possessing excellent mechanical properties and delicate structures. Nowadays, bio-inspired hydrogels have been intensively explored due to their promising potential applications in tissue engineering. However, the traditional manufacturing technology is challenging to produce the bio-inspired hydrogels, and the typical biological composite topologies of bio-inspired hydrogels are accessible completed using 3D bioprinting at micrometer resolution. In this chapter, the 3D bioprinting techniques used for the fabrication of bio-inspired hydrogels were summarized, and the materials used were outlined. This chapter also focuses on the applications of bio-inspired hydrogels fabricated using available 3D bioprinting technologies. The development of 3D bioprinting techniques in the future would bring us closer to the fabrication capabilities of living organisms, which would be widely used in biomedical applications.