The 2010 International Conference on Biofabrication (BF2010) special issue

BF2010, the 2010 International Conference on Biofabrication was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA (4–6 October 2010). The objective of BF2010 was to provide a broad communication venue for multidisciplinary scientists, researchers and industrial participants to exchange and disseminate recent scientific discoveries, research, development and emerging applications in the field of biofabrication, to promote international collaboration, and to explore new directions in research on biofabrication. The conference's major topics included, but were not limited to, the following thrust areas: Bioprinting of cells, proteins, and biologics, including inkjet printing, bioplotting, biological laser printing and other novel bioprinting technologies; Biofabrication of biological models, tissue models, disease pathogeneses models, drug toxicological and discovery models, and cell/tissue-on-a-chip systems; Biofabrication of tissue scaffolds and tissue engineered substitutes for regenerative medicine; Integrated bio-micro (micro-bio) and bio-nano (nano-bio) fabrication, bio-additive manufacturing, and the state-of-the-art and future of biomaterials suitable for bioprinting and biofabrication; Design, model, and evaluation of the biofabrication process; computer-aided biofabrication; modeling on biofabricated structures, cell aggregates and tissue ingrowth; Design and fabrication of various drug delivery vehicles; Biofabrication industry, trends and future directions. BF2010 embraced over 130 attendees representing the following countries: Portugal, France, The Republic of Korea, China, the USA, the UK, Australia, Japan, Italy, Poland, Germany, Canada, The Netherlands, Greece, and Brazil. This was the largest gathering of the international biofabrication community. The BF2010 technical program consisted of three full-day 16 parallel sessions with six keynote presentations, 88 oral presentations and 26 poster presentations. The poster presentations were reviewed by selected judges from the BF2010 scientific committee along with participants of the conference. The top three posters were awarded at the closing ceremony. At the closing ceremony Professor Makoto Nakamura announced `BF2011 in Toyama' (www.lni.co.jp/biofabrication2011/). One milestone event of BF2010 was the launch of the International Society of Biofabrication (ISBF), a scientific and professional non-profit society, which promotes advances in biofabrication research, development, education, training, and medical and clinical applications. ISBF's core purpose is to foster scientific and technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity. ISBF promotes interaction between the different disciplines of the field of biofabrication as well as between basic research and applied practice. An important objective of ISBF is cooperation with other scientific organizations and communities. This special issue is a selection of 15 papers from the BF2010 conference that are representative of the recent developments in the field of biofabrication. Several selected papers introduce various enabling techniques for the fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) tissue scaffolds. For example, in the paper `Development of a hybrid scaffold with synthetic biomaterials and hydrogel using solid freeform fabrication technology', Shim et al at POSTECH, Korea, report the development of fabricating a 3D hybrid scaffold that consists of synthetic biomaterials and a natural hydrogel using the multi-head deposition system (MHDS) based on additive manufacturing technology. Zhu et al from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, describe the `Development of novel hybrid poly(l-lactide)/chitosan scaffolds using the rapid freeze prototyping technique'. In the reported work, 3D scaffolds are fabricated from a mixture of chitosan microspheres (CMs) and poly(l-lactide) by means of a rapid freeze prototyping (RFP) technique. Hamid et al at Drexel University, USA, present `Fabrication of three-dimensional scaffolds using precision extrusion deposition with an assisted cooling device'. They apply a precision extrusion deposition (PED) technique to fabricate micro-scaled scaffolds with high printing resolution, precision, and control for a special set of biopolymers. In `Laser sintering fabrication of three-dimensional tissue engineering scaffolds with a flow channel network' Niino et al at Tokyo University, Japan, introduce a process in which a biodegradable plastic powder is mixed with fine salt grains and processed by laser sintering additive manufacturing technology, to develop a scaffold with a fine flow channel network. Various cell printing/deposition techniques are also reported in this special issue. Work on `Three-dimensional inkjet biofabrication based on designed images' is reported by Arai et al from Toyama University, Japan. They introduce a custom-made inkjet printer, `Inkjet 3D bioprinter', which is based on inkjet technology for fabricating 3D structures composed of living cells and biomaterials with which semi-solid hydrogel structures can be constructed in liquid medium. Hamon et al from Tokyo University, Japan, report a new methodology for engineering thick liver tissues `Avidin–biotin-based approach to forming heterogenic cell clusters and cell sheets on a gas-permeable membrane'. They describe a new methodology for the formation of a functional thick hepatic tissue usable for cell sheet technology. A `Laser-guidance-based cell deposition microscope for heterotypic single-cell micropatterning' by Ma et al at Clemson University, USA, is reported, which is capable of producing high resolution micropatterns of different cell types on a substratum and allows for on-stage incubation for long-term cell culturing. Tejavibulya et al at Brown University, USA, report `Directed self-assembly of large scaffold-free multi-cellular honeycomb structures'. The authors use a direct self-assembly approach to create large multi-cellular honeycomb building blocks, whereby cell-to-cell adhesion drives the formation of a 3D structure. Work on `Bioprinting cell-laden matrigel for radioprotection study of liver by pro-drug conversion in dual-tissue microfluidic chip' is reported by Snyder et al from Drexel University, USA. The paper introduces a combined cell-printing and microfabrication technique to develop a microfluidic system to study drug conversion and radiation protection of living liver tissue analogs. In `Microengineering methods for cell-based microarrays and high-throughput drug-screening applications' Xu et al from Harvard University, USA, report the use of microengineering technology to produce 3D cell-based drug-screening assays. Work on `Biofabrication of chitosan–silver composite SERS substrates enabling quantification of adenine by spectroscopic shift' is reported by Luo et al from the University of Maryland, USA. They present a new biofabrication strategy using surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) to fabricate substrates that enable the quantification through a newly discovered spectroscopic shift due to chitosan–analyte interactions. In `Design and fabrication of a novel porous implant with pre-set channels based on ceramic stereolithography for vascular implantation', Bian et al at Xi'an Jiaotong University, China, report a novel biomimetic design approach for blood vessel implants with pre-set channels to treat early femoral head necrosis. Khoda et al from the University at Buffalo, USA, introduce a novel continuous tool path planning methodology to design `A functionally gradient variational porosity architecture for hollowed scaffolds fabrication'. In `CAD/CAM-assisted breast reconstruction' Melchels et al from Queensland University of Technology, Australia, report on the development of a generic algorithm for the design and control of porosity patterns within a scaffold. We hope that the selected papers will be of interest to the reader, and can encourage and stimulate further research in the field of biofabrication. We also would like to take this opportunity to thank all contributors and reviewers for their support, and thank IOP Publishing for publishing this special issue.

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