An international project will use human biological material as ink for 3D bioprinting, according to a recent press release.

Bioprinting – creating structures from cells that better represent reality than a petri dish – is currently done using animal-derived materials such as collagen and gelatine. An animal-free alternative is to use synthetic polymers, but these lack the sophistication and ‘realness’ that biological cells bring. The international HU3DINKS project aims to use biological material derived from human placenta to print more realistic, non-animal biological structures.