Biofabrication strategies with single-cell resolution: a review

Abstract

The introduction of living cells to manufacturing process have enabled the engineering of complex biological tissues in vitro. The recent advances in biofabrication with extremely high resolution (e.g., at single cell level) have further enhanced this capacity and opened new avenue for tissue engineering. In this Review, we comprehensively overview the current biofabrication strategies with single-cell resulotion and categorize them based on the dimension of the single-cell building blocks, i.e., zero-dimensional (0D) single-cell droplets, one-dimensional (1D) single-cell filaments and two-dimensional (2D) single-cell sheets. We provide an informative introduction to the most recent advances of these approaches (e.g., cell trapping, bioprinting, electrospinning, microfluidics and cell sheets) and further illustrated how they can be used in in vitro modelling and regenerative medicine. We highlight the significance of single-cell-level biofabrication and discuss the challenges and opportunities in the field.