3D Printing of Scaffold for Cells Delivery: Advances in Skin Tissue Engineering

Injury or damage to tissue and organs is a major health problem, resulting in about half of the world’s annual healthcare expenditure every year. Advances in the fields of stem cells (SCs) and biomaterials processing have provided a tremendous leap for researchers to manipulate the dynamics between these two, and obtain a skin substitute that can completely heal the wounded areas. Although wound healing needs a coordinated interplay between cells, extracellular proteins and growth factors, the most important players in this process are the endogenous SCs, which activate the repair cascade by recruiting cells from different sites. Extra cellular matrix (ECM) proteins are activated by these SCs, which in turn aid in cellular migrations and finally secretion of growth factors that can seal and heal the wounds. The interaction between ECM proteins and SCs helps the skin to sustain the rigors of everyday activity, and in an attempt to attain this level of functionality in artificial three-dimensional (3D) constructs, tissue engineered biomaterials are fabricated using more advanced techniques such as bioprinting and laser assisted printing of the organs. This review provides a concise summary of the most recent advances that have been made in the area of polymer bio-fabrication using 3D bio printing used for encapsulating stem cells for skin regeneration. The focus of this review is to describe, in detail, the role of 3D architecture and arrangement of cells within this system that can heal wounds and aid in skin regeneration.