ABSTRACT
Three-dimensional (3D) printing is a fast-emerging applied technology that has had a major impact on healthcare applications, particularly the pharmaceutical field, over the last decades. 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing (AM), has been used for building a wide range of 3D structures and complex geometries layer by layer through a computer-aided design since the early 1980s [1]. 3D printing widens the manufacturing window, allowing the production of customized medical devices from metals, ceramics, and polymers without the need for molds or machining which was typically used in conventional formative and subtractive manufacturing [1,2]. Since the early 2000s, 3D printing has been successfully applied in pharmaceutics, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine due to its capability for the fabrication of 3D biological constructs with high shape complexity and fidelity [3,4]. 3D printing involving biological substances is called 3D bioprinting, where bioinks, which comprise a choice of biomaterials, cells, drugs, proteins, or growth factors, play a major role in printing desired constructs or devices [5]. 3D bioprinting could transform the future of medicine, that is, the way drugs and complex living tissues are made.
