Bioprinting for combating infectious diseases

Zimmerling, Amanda; Chen, Xiongbiao

Infectious diseases have the ability to impact health on a global scale, as is being demonstrated by the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The strenuous circumstances related to this global health crises have been highlighting the challenges faced by the biomedical field in combating infectious diseases. Notably, printing technologies have advanced rapidly over the last decades, allowing for incorporating living cells in the printing process (or bioprinting) to create constructs that are able to serve as in vitro tissue or virus-disease models in combating infectious diseases. This paper describes applications of bioprinting in addressing the challenges faced in combating infectious diseases, with a specific focus on in vitro modelling and on development of therapeutic agents and vaccines. Integration of these technologies may allow for a more efficient and effective response to current and future pandemics.