Recent Advances in Biosensing in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine

Abstract

In tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, biosensors act as analytical devices that combine biological elements with electrical components to generate a measurable signal. The application of biosensing in the nearest future may need high performance, incorporation of biosensors into feedback-based devices, advanced diagnostics as well as detection of toxins. These functionalities will aid the biosensors with increased sensitivity, specificity, and the ability to detect multiple analytes. With the newly improved strategies in fabrication, sensors may develop high spatial sensitivity and draw us near actualizing capable devices. Although biosensors have been produced in past years, there are still pending challenges such as scale-up process and long-term stability of commercial products that should be addressed. This review will also involve the application of additive manufacturing techniques such as 3D bioprinting to produce world-recognized biosensors. We will focus on some bioprinting techniques including laser direct-write and also consider microfluidic tissue engineering which can sense biomolecules in the miniaturized tissue constructs in real time at quite low concentration through different sensing systems. We also review its advances in mobile Health (mhealth) technologies for detection and monitoring as biosensors are produced with living cells encapsulated in 3D microenvironments. These advances and many more will, however, grow the community of biosensors and their availability in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.