Technological watch

Tissue engineering has enabled the creation of strategies and solutions in the biomedical area, which have widely benefited patients suffering from different conditions. In recent years, new technologies and advances in related fields have increased the effectiveness of the treatments developed in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine and have marked a milestone in the history of medicine. New discoveries have provided a wider understanding of the biology of tissues and organs, hand in hand with the fourth industrial revolution, particularly, the disruptive technologies for manufacturing, a new possibility may be within reach in the next years: to fabricate organs that are functionally equivalent to physiological ones. This article presents a general revision of the role of tissue engineering and the implementation of additive manufacturing technology. The analysis is under the light of a simple molecular biology interpretation of the key aspects, main successes, and major challenges. This revision summarizes how the biology of tissues can be reinterpreted in an engineering framework as the differential adhesion hypothesis (DAH), which allows modelling a wide range of fundamental interactions among cells. Some models for tissue morphogenesis based on contact interaction and signaling agents are presented and analyzed in the context of the current state of the art of 3D-bioprinting technology. Finally, potential directions for future research and innovation development in this area are proposed.