Business area

Bioprinting

Enabling the future of life-saving treatments through bioprinting of tissues and organs models.
3D bioprinting is revolutionizing tissue engineering and the future of health. BICO's Bioprinting business area provides the most cutting edge technologies, to the brightest minds, to enable this future.

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What is Bioprinting?​

What is Bioprinting?​​

Bioprinting is an additive manufacturing process similar to conventional 3D printing – it uses a digital file as a blueprint to print an object in a variety of geometries and sizes. But unlike 3D printing, bioprinters print with cells and biomaterials, creating organ-like structures that mimic physiological conditions

Why Bioprinting?​

Why Bioprinting?​​

Bioprinting has massive potential to revolutionize the fields of tissue engineering, drug discovery and regenerative medicine. Bioprinted tissue enable researchers to test potential treatments and evaluate efficacy in earlier stages, and providing a more realistic model of cellular function. In time, new drugs and treatments can be developed following a process designed to minimize failures, reduce animal testing and reach clinical trials faster.

Bioprinting helps address the major challenge faced by cell biologists around the world. The challenge of recapitulating the in vivo environment. By controlling both macro and micro features, bioprinters enable researchers to fine tune geometries, cell positioning, biomechanical gradients and many more parameters that provide the ideal biological environment for cells to thrive.

Applications of Bioprinting

Organ Printing​

Unfortunately, 21 patients per day die due to organ transplant shortages. Being able to bioprint organs could help clinicians keep up with patients or eliminate the list entirely. While this solution is far down the line, it is one of the most impactful possibilities in the field.

Drug development​
Many of today’s studies rely on living subjects – an inconvenient and expensive method for both academic and commercial organizations. Bioprinted tissues can be used instead during the early stages, providing a more ethical and cost-effective solution. Using bioprintined tissue can help researchers determine a drug candidate’s efficacy sooner, enabling them to save money and time.
Regenerative medicine​
A lot of tissue-specific bioinks are available today, enabling researchers to work with artificial skin cells, neurons, hepatocytes and more. One day, clinicians could use these models for therapeutic procedures like skin grafts, bone bandages for combat wounds or even plastic surgery.

Customer Spotlights

Bioprinting

Printing vascularized skin

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has developed a bioink of human cells and animal collagen using CELLINK’s BIO X bioprinter.

Bioprinting

Mass Produced Stem Cells – A Gateway to Personalized Medicine

Ronawk mass-produces adult stem cells using bioprinters from CELLINK paving the way for the possibility to grow and transplant patients’ own stem cells without the need for the immunosuppressive drugs that are usually required after an organ donation.

Publications

Our collaborators continually publish groundbreaking research that drives the knowledge, methods and results of the life sciences community as a whole. Explore this impressive roundup of the latest peer-reviewed publications that cite our bioprinters, bioinks and more.

Companies

By releasing the first universal bioink in 2016, CELLINK democratized the cost of entry for researchers around the world and played a major role in turning the then up-and-coming field of 3D bioprinting into the thriving $1 billion industry it is today. CELLINKs bioinks, bioprinters, software and services have enabled critical breakthroughs in a wide range of applications from 3D cell culturing to tissue engineering to drug development. 

Founded in 2016 by entrepreneurs out of Rutgers University, Visikol is a contract research services company focusing on accelerating the discovery and development of therapeutics by providing pharmaceutical and biotech companies with best-in-class 3D cell culture, 3D tissue imaging, multiplex imaging, and digital pathology services. Today, Visikol counts half of the top twenty pharmaceutical companies as customers.

The world leader of reliable in vitro human tissue model innovation. MatTeks skin, ocular, oral, respiratory, and intestinal tissue models are used to assess safety and efficacy throughout the cosmetics, chemical, pharmaceutical, and household product industries. These advanced tissue models empower companies to achieve their goals of non-animal testing while lowering testing costs and providing human-relevant results.

San Diego based Advanced BioMatrix is a leader in the life science industry of three dimensional (3D) applications for tissue culture, cell assay, bioprinting and cell proliferation. The products are recognized as the standard for purity, functionality and consistency.

With over 2,500 users, Nanoscribe develops and produces 3D printers and maskless lithography systems for microfabrication as well as specially developed printing materials and application-specific solution sets. The specialist for additive manufacturing of high-precision structures and objects on the nano-, micro- and mesoscale was founded in 2007 as a spin-off of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

A pioneer in the field of Digital Light processing (DLP) based printing is an emerging force within the Bioprinting industry. Allegro 3D’s DLP based bioprinting technology enables high-throughput manufacturing of biomedical devices, and precision human tissues for cell culture, drug screening, and regenerative medicine applications.

Featured Product Offering

With six printheads in total for unparalleled versatility, the BIO X6 bioprinter from CELLINK makes it easier to produce more complex and sophisticated constructs with a broader range of materials, cells and crosslinking tools. With many possible combinations, the six slots significantly increase throughput, cut down on print time and improve experiment efficiency. The BIO X6 is the preferred system for researchers seeking to enhance 3D cell culturing, tissue engineering, disease modeling and drug screening applications.

MatTek’s patented EpiDerm system is a leading in vitro testing technology for dermal toxicologists and formulation scientists. With multiple ECVAM validations and OECD accepted test guidelines, EpiDerm is a proven in vitro model system for chemical, pharmaceutical and skin care product testing.

The highest density collagen ink available on the market from Advanced Biomatrix, tailored for effortless bioprinting. Collagen is the most abundant protein in the body making it the premier material for developing bioprinted constructs with in vivo like conditions.

The Quantum X bio, a true demonstration of bioconvergence. A product that is co-developed by CELLINK and Nanoscribe, it is the first of its kind 3D bioprinter, enabling submicron printing resolution, and raising the bar for high precision 3D bioprinting. Powered by Two Photon Polymerization (2PP), the system is the premier tool for miniaturizing bioprinting, redefining what it means to work within advanced biomedical applications, including tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

Further Reading

3D Bioprinting Set To Propel Medical Research Forward

3D printing techniques are being used in medical research to establish more personalized treatment approaches and accelerate drug discovery. The technology is unlocking the potential of 3D cell culture approaches to better replicate the human body, gain a greater understanding of various cell types and, ultimately, develop patient- and organ-specific treatment pathways.

How 3D Bioprinters Are Advancing Cancer Research

Although the past decade has yielded significant reductions in the cancer death rate around the world, cancer is still the second leading cause of death globally, accounting for about 10 million deaths in 2020. This sobering statistic makes the search for more efficient cancer solutions an important priority for researchers the world over. While animal models have advanced our understanding of the molecular mechanisms associated with cancer and its progression, therapeutics developed with these interspecies models often fail in clinical trials because the efficacy results do not translate to humans.

Fighting to End Animal Testing

Drug and cosmetic developers are still mandated to test on animals, even if it doesn’t benefit the science. This leads to the experimentation on and death of hundreds of millions of primates, dogs, rabbits, mice and other animals. With 3D bioprinting, BICO is replacing outdated methods for drug discovery to end animal testing once and for all.