Skin Bioprinting: Impending Reality or Fantasy?

Bioprinting provides a fully automated and advanced platform that facilitates the simultaneous and highly specific deposition of multiple types of skin cells and biomaterials, a process that is lacking in conventional skin tissue-engineering approaches. Here, we provide a realistic, current overview of skin bioprinting, distinguishing facts from myths. We present an in-depth analysis of both current skin bioprinting works and the cellular and matrix components of native human skin. We also highlight current limitations and achievements, followed by design considerations and a future outlook for skin bioprinting. The potential of bioprinting with converging opportunities in biology, material, and computational design will eventually facilitate the fabrication of improved tissue-engineered (TE) skin constructs, making bioprinting skin an impending reality.

TrendsSignificant progress has been achieved in TE skin constructs for clinical applications over the past three decades.Despite its partial clinical success, there are increasing demands from both patients and clinicians to address some of the existing limitations in current TE skin constructs.The potential outlooks of skin bioprinting are presented, and we suggest that its potential has yet to be realized.