AccScience Publishing / IJB / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/ijb.4673
REVIEW
Early Access

Miniature modelling while aiming for transplantation– Current challenges and future perspectives of lung bioprinting

Judit Bovari-Biri1 Kitti Garai1 Borbal Lovaszi2 Zoltan Vereb2 Judit E Pongracz1*
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1 Department of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Pecs, Pecs, Baranya, Hungary
2 Department of Dermatology and Allergology, Albert Szentgyorgyi Clinical Centre, University of Szeged, Szeged, Csongrad-Csanad, Hungary
Submitted: 28 August 2024 | Accepted: 7 October 2024 | Published: 7 October 2024
(This article belongs to the Special Issue 3D Printing for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine)
© 2024 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

The development of three-dimensional (3D) lung organs or tissues using gravitational methods and bioprinting technologies shows great promise for producing lung tissue for research, pharmaceutical, and clinical applications. The advancement of innovative technologies can improve our understanding of lung diseases and, if necessary, enable the production of replacement lungs for transplantation. The development of functional organs-on-a-chip and disease-specific lung tissues could provide a deep understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying lung diseases and aid the identification of drug targets. This knowledge has the potential to enhance our understanding of lung tissue regeneration processes and could lead to the development of more effective treatments for human lung diseases. So much so that lung transplants in most disease-induced cases would not be necessary, as the appropriate medications could induce regeneration of the damaged organ. This review highlights the importance of using a variety of materials, preparation methods, and sizes of lung tissues in 3D bioprinting technologies to understand lung function better, test for drug selection during therapy and eventually produce transplantable organs, if necessary. The review also emphasizes the need for improvements in legislation and guidelines for researchers aiming to achieve quality-assured biomanufacturing.

Keywords
Lung diseases
Lung bioprinting
Lung tissue aggregates
Personalized medicine
Drug testing
Organ-on-a-chip
Funding
University of Pecs, POC/2024.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
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International Journal of Bioprinting, Electronic ISSN: 2424-8002 Print ISSN: 2424-7723, Published by AccScience Publishing