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REVIEW ARTICLE

From cells to organs: Technical challenges of two-photon polymerization in biomedical engineering

Yanzhe Fu1,2,3,4,5† ,  Mingming Huang6† ,  Jiayong Wei7 ,  Xiang Ding5 ,  Bosong Yu8 ,  Jiebo Li1,2,3,4,* ,  Jianmin Han9* ,  Lizhen Wang1,2,3,4* ,  Yubo Fan1,2,3,4*
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1 Key Laboratory of Biomechanics and Mechanobiology, Ministry of Education, Beihang University, Beijing, China
2 Key Laboratory of Innovation and Transformation of Advanced Medical Devices, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Beihang University, Beijing, China
3 National Medical Innovation Platform for Industry–Education Integration in Advanced Medical Devices, Beihang University, Beijing, China
4 School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, China
5 Center for Medical Metrology, National Institute of Metrology, Beijing, China
6 Department of Dental Materials, Peking University School and Hospital of Stomatology, Beijing, China
7 Industrial Science and Engineering Technology Laboratory, Hangzhou International Innovation Institute, Beihang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
8 School of Instrumentation and Optoelectronic Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, China
9 Department of Prosthetics, Tianjin Medical University School and Hospital of Stomatology, Tianjin, China
10 Tianjin Key Laboratory of Oral Soft and Hard Tissues Restoration and Regeneration, Tianjin, China
†These authors contributed equally to this work.
IJB, 025280281 https://doi.org/10.36922/IJB025280281
Received: 11 July 2025 | Accepted: 13 August 2025 | Published online: 20 August 2025
© 2025 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/ )
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Abstract

Nanomanufacturing technology is crucial in advancing sophisticated biomedical devices, biochips, tissue engineering, and advanced biomedical materials. Two-photon polymerization (TPP) offers nanoscale fabrication precision, eliminates the need for masks, and allows the creation of arbitrary three-dimensional structures, providing technical advantages unparalleled by traditional methods. Applying TPP technology in the biomedical field presents new challenges related to materials and systems. Although there has been significant discussion regarding biomaterials, comparatively little attention has been given to the limitations of manufacturing systems for biomedical functional devices. Commercial TPP systems predominantly rely on point-by-point scanning for fabrication, which leads to low throughput. From a biomedical perspective, the goal is to achieve manufacturing precision at the single-cell level while scaling production throughput to the organ level. Advancements in precision and throughput are critical to expanding the applications of TPP in biomedical engineering. This review introduces the fundamental principles of TPP and summarizes recent advancements in TPP applications within tissue engineering, medical devices, and microfluidics. It then delves into the technological progress of TPP in recent years, focusing on aspects such as system design, manufacturing processes, and fabrication principles. The review highlights advancements in areas including the kinetics of light–matter interactions and the development of cutting-edge techniques such as spatiotemporal focusing. Finally, it discusses future development directions of TPP technology in biomedical applications

Graphical abstract
Keywords
Biomedical functional devices
Kinetics
Spatiotemporal focusing
Tissue engineering
Two-photon polymerization
Funding
This study was funded National Natural Science Foundation of China (92477111, 22073003), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (L232109), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (YWF-22-K101).
Conflict of interest
Jiebo Li is a Guest Editor of this special issue, but was not in any way involved in the editorial and peer-review process conducted for this paper, directly or indirectly. Separately, other authors declared that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have influenced the work reported in this paper.
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International Journal of Bioprinting, Electronic ISSN: 2424-8002 Print ISSN: 2424-7723, Published by AccScience Publishing
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