**6.5 Future prospect of 3D printing**

Despite all the challenges, 3D bioprinting offers great potential and diverse applications for the medical and healthcare sector.

#### *6.5.1 Complex organ engineering*

Although few technical aspects are still to be figured out, rapid prototyping creates possibilities to generate complex organs like kidney, liver or even heart, despite having a heterogeneous cellular composition. With the fast pace of advancement in technology and the number of researches going on in this field, the current challenges are expected to be resolved eventually. It has been foreseen that within 20 years, 3D printed organs will be commercially available for transplantation [105].

#### *6.5.2 In vivo test models*

The animal study is a mandatory part of drug designing, which applies to tissue engineering and cell therapy. It has been estimated that about 115 million animals are being used in the biomedical industry per year [107]. The printed organs can replace these animal tests of safety, efficacy, and toxicology, saving a number of animals, and resolving the ethical conflict in this issue. At the same time, these printed organs can be more "close to the human subject" model than the animals.

#### *6.5.3 New drug design*

In an optimistic vision, it may be possible to have a printed piece of patient's tissue to test which drug is suitable and effective for that particular patient, before applying on them, using this technology.

#### *6.5.4 Mass production*

Conventional tissue engineering involves customized scaffold preparation and manual cell seeding. Hence, the success rate is not consistent and the production cost is high, thereby resulting in very costly tissue that many people cannot afford. With the automation and advancement of bioreactor technique in conjunction with rapid prototyping, mass production of the complete organ is a very likely prospect [104]. This will increase the efficiency of the procedure of organ formation, and mass production capability will be economic and more affordable.

#### *6.5.5 Less dependency on organ donation*

The organ donation rate has always been far less than the requirement in a given period. On top of that, immunogenicity, rejection, and graft-versus-host disease make the transplantation process further difficult. With rapid prototyping, the scarcity of human organs can be resolved, with less immune rejection and higher effectivity.

#### *6.5.6 In situ tissue printing*

In situ generation of skin has already been achieved. With the progress of this technology, it is deemed that in future, a small piece of any tissue can be bioprinted in situ, during surgery, in no time, with precision [105].

## **7. Conclusions**

Regenerative medicine is the new big thing in the medical and healthcare areas. Due to the promising outcome and compatibility for the human body, this

**201**

**Author details**

Fauzi Mh Busra1

Shiplu Roy Chowdhury1

**Conflict of interest**

and Md Enamul Hoque3

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh

provided the original work is properly cited.

, Yogeswaran Lokanathan1

1 Tissue Engineering Centre, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre,

3 Department of Biomedical Engineering, Military Institute of Science and

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

, Muhammad Dain Yazid1

\*

2 Yakin Medic Sdn Bhd, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

\*Address all correspondence to: enamul1973@gmail.com

, Law Jia Xian1

, Nadiah Sulaiman1

,

, Gargy Lahiry2

*3D Printed Bioscaffolds for Developing Tissue-Engineered Constructs*

alternative treatment method might compete and/or take over conventional medicine soon. Rapid prototyping has a very wide prospect in regenerative medicine, medical device, and pharmaceuticals. Incorporating the knowledge of cellular biology, biomaterial design, tissue engineering, bioreactors, and so on, organ regeneration will be much more precise and effective. With this speed of progression of science, the remaining challenges will be resolved soon, thereby opening a new era

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92418*

of healthcare and a better life for human beings.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

*3D Printed Bioscaffolds for Developing Tissue-Engineered Constructs DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92418*

alternative treatment method might compete and/or take over conventional medicine soon. Rapid prototyping has a very wide prospect in regenerative medicine, medical device, and pharmaceuticals. Incorporating the knowledge of cellular biology, biomaterial design, tissue engineering, bioreactors, and so on, organ regeneration will be much more precise and effective. With this speed of progression of science, the remaining challenges will be resolved soon, thereby opening a new era of healthcare and a better life for human beings.
