a look into the history of bioprinting.
1980
Japanese Doctor Hideo Kodama filed the first patent for a rapid 3D printing prototype that used UV lights to harden polymers & create solid objects.
1983
Charles Hull invents stereolithography, a resin 3D printing or additive manufacturing process that uses a vat of photopolymer resin that can be cured.
1984
Charles Hull makes history by being the very first individual to patent a stereolithography apparatus (SLA) machine in 3D printing.
1986
Charles Hull co-founds 3D Systems Corporation in Valencia, California, becoming the world's very first 3D printing company.
1988
Carl Deckard, a graduate student at the University of Texas, successfully patents the selective laser sintering (SLS) process. Selective laser sintering is an additive manufacturing process that uses a laser to fuse and build powders into a 3D model.
1989
S. Scott Crump and Lisa Crump invent and file a patent for Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), a 3D printing process that uses a continuous filament of a thermoplastic material. The Crumps also co-found their 3D printing company known as Stratasys later that year.
1997
AeroMat, a subsidiary of MTS Systems Corp.,produces the first 3D-printed metal using Laser Additive Manufacturing (LAM), which employs high-powered lasers to fuse powdered titanium alloys.
1999
Scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine create the first 3D-printed lab-grown organ, a bladder. The bladder is made from a patient’s own cells, significantly reducing the risk for rejection if implanted.
2000
Materialise launches the Mammoth Stereolithography machine, which has a build area of more than two meters. This enables the large-scale creation of 3D objects in one piece through the successive addition of liquid polymer hardened using a laser beam.
2003
The emerging field of bioprinting expands at Clemson University in South Carolina when Thomas Boland files a patent for the ink-jet printing of viable cells.
2000
Thomas Boland, a bioengineer at the University of Texas, El Paso, pioneers bioprinting through his use of a Hewlett-Packard inkjet printer to print a bioink made of living bovine cells suspended in cell-culture medium.
2009
The research company Organovo invents the world's very first commercially available 3D bioprinter, the Novogen MMX.
Organovo creates the world's first 3D printed blood vessels through the use of elements of native arteries: primary endothelial, smooth muscle and fibroblast cells from human donors.
2010
2012
LayerWise builds the world’s first 3D-printed jaw implant for an 83-year- old patient in the Netherlands. The implant helps promote the growth of new bone tissue.
Swedish company Cellink introduces the first standardized commercial bio-ink to the market, derived from a seaweed material called non-cellulose alginate. The bio-ink can be used for printing tissue cartilage.
2015
2019
Bioengineers from Rice University & the University of Washington discover that natural & synthetic food dyes can be used as photo absorbers that enable stereolithographic production of hydrogels, which allows scientists to create entangled vascular networks that mimic the body’s natural passageways for blood, air, lymph & other vital fluids.
