Application and development of 3D bioprinting in the field of spinal cord injury

Spinal cord injury is the highly fatal and disabling neurological condition that often results in irreversible loss of sensory, motor and autonomic function. The immediate and secondary responses at the injury time result in a local cascade response in the spinal cord that inhibits nerve regeneration and tissue repair. Current surgical and pharmacological treatments fail to achieve the desired effect, meanwhile 3D bioprinting-based transplantation strategies are emerging as promising candidates for translational therapies. Neural tissue engineering research focuses on balancing the inhibitory microenvironment and effectively bridging the biological scaffold and nerve cells to repair spinal cord tissue structure and nerve cell function. Additive manufacturing fix the relative positions of components by precisely printing cells to regulate the growth states and promote differentiation and print specific neurotrophic molecules in the reserved apertures to form specific functional neural networks that can help improve functional recovery after spinal cord injury, which has high promise for clinical applications.