Healthcare (Commonwealth Union) – 3D bioprinting has shown great promise in medicine with the possibility of playing a role in organ transplant and medical testing.
Tissue engineering has a particular focus on recreating the structure and function of natural biological tissues. These engineered tissues hold promise for use in areas such as studying diseases, testing new drugs, and creating implantable grafts.
One of the central technologies in this field is 3D bioprinting, which combines living cells, biocompatible substances, and growth factors to construct three-dimensional tissue and organ models. At present, a widely adopted method involves additive manufacturing: using digital blueprints to deposit thin layers of bio-ink—cells suspended in a soft gel—into a support medium. This process builds up a 3D construct layer by layer. Although this technique allows for the creation of intricate structures that would be difficult to assemble by hand, it still faces
Ritu Raman, the Eugene Bell Career Development Professor of Tissue Engineering and an assistant professor of mechanical engineering indicated that the current 3D bioprinting methods often lack integrated process control, which makes it difficult to avoid defects in the printed tissues. Adding such control could improve consistency between tissue samples and reduce waste of valuable materials.
She further indicated that, with the wide variety of 3D bioprinting tools available, there is an urgent need to design optimization strategies that are modular, efficient, and broadly accessible.
Driven by this need, Raman partnered with Tolga Durak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Safety, Health, and Environmental Discovery Lab (The SHED) and also brought in the expertise of Professor Bianca Colosimo from the Polytechnic University of Milan (Polimi). Colosimo had completed a sabbatical at MIT while being assisted by John Hart, the Class of 1922 Professor, co-director of the MIT Initiative for New Manufacturing, director of the Center for Advanced Production Technologies, as well as head of Mechanical Engineering.
Colosimo indicated that AI and data-driven methods are already transforming everyday life, and their influence will be even greater in the developing field of 3D bioprinting as well as manufacturing more broadly. At MIT, she joined hands with Raman and her group to design an early solution that opens doors to intelligent bioprinting.
Colosimo pointed out that this approach is now active in both our labs at Polimi and MIT, functioning as a shared platform that allows us to exchange information and findings across different settings, and opening doors for future collaborative projects.
Their new study, published this week in Device by Raman, Colosimo, and lead authors Giovanni Zanderigo (a Rocca Fellow at Polimi) and Ferdows Afghah (MIT), introduces an innovative method to tackle the challenge. The researchers developed and tested a modular, affordable, and printer-independent monitoring system that includes a small tool for capturing images layer by layer. Using this technique, a digital microscope records high-resolution snapshots of tissues during the printing process, which are then quickly compared to the intended design through an AI-powered image analysis system.
“This method enabled us to quickly identify print defects, such as depositing too much or too little bio-ink, thus helping us identify optimal print parameters for a variety of different materials,” added Raman. “The approach is a low-cost — less than $500 — scalable, and adaptable solution that can be readily implemented on any standard 3D bioprinter. Here at MIT, the monitoring platform has already been integrated into the 3D bioprinting facilities in The SHED. Beyond MIT, our research offers a practical path toward greater reproducibility, improved sustainability, and automation in the field of tissue engineering. This research could have a positive impact on human health by improving the quality of the tissues we fabricate to study and treat debilitating injuries and disease.”
“These capabilities will be immediately utilized for fabricating the bio-printed scaffolds and vascularized constructs to cultivate microphysiological systems (MPS) and large-scale liver organoids in our current research project,” explained Durak.
