Top 5 3D-bioprinting innovations this year

Here are five noteworthy 3D-bioprinting innovations that have emerged in 2025. You will find a healthy mixture of clinical trials, research projects, or market-ready innovations in specialist areas such as paediatric airway implants to complex cardiac tissues and patient-specific bone models. Let’s take a look at these fascinating endeavours.

Biofabricated airway implants for tracheal repair

Organisations: Michigan Medicine and Materialise

Stage: clinical trials

Michigan Medicine and Materialise are collaborating to address a life-threatening paediatric condition using biofabrication. The team is trialling 3D-printed airway splints designed for children with tracheobronchomalacia – a condition in which weakened airway walls collapse during breathing.

Unlike permanent implants, these splints are made from bioresorbable material, and they are a temporary structural support during critical growth phases. Over time, the airway strengthens, and so the splints gradually dissolve, reducing the need for further surgeries. The trial launched in January 2025 and the plan is to enrol at least 35 infants and children over an eight-year period across multiple sites in the US.

Bone organoids tailored from patient cells

Institution: ETH Zurich

Stage: pre-clinical research

At ETH Zurich’s Laboratory for Bone Biomechanics, researchers are engineering miniature bone-like structures – aka bone organoids – using cells derived from individual patients. Rather than using generic models, these bioprinted constructs are tailored to mimic each patient’s unique bone physiology.

The aim is to provide a more accurate platform for studying disease mechanisms, testing drug responses, and eventually customising therapies.

ETH Zurich is collaborating with the Children’s Hospital Zurich to bring clinical insight into the project, helping to advance research endeavours.

3D and 4D printed meta-biomaterials

Institution: TU Delft

Stage: research and development

TU Delft is combining 3D and 4D printing to create what it refers to as ‘meta-biomaterials’. These advanced materials have been engineered with precise geometrical features that allow them to change shape or stiffness in response to their biological environment.

The goal is to enhance the performance of bone implants by more closely replicating the adaptive nature of real bone. Early investigations are focused on orthopaedic implants, where the responsiveness could improve integration and regeneration following injury or surgery.

Bioprinted vascular networks using Co-SWIFT

Institution: Harvard Wyss Institute

Stage: advanced research

At the Wyss Institute, researchers are looking into one of bioprinting’s most complex challenges: creating viable blood vessel networks within printed tissues. The Co-SWIFT method (short for coaxial sacrificial writing into functional tissue) enables the bioprinting of vessels that include layered cellular architecture – featuring both smooth muscle and endothelial cells (the inner lining of blood vessels and lymphatic vessels).

The printed vessels mirror the branching, blood-carrying nature of real vasculature, which is crucial for sustaining living tissue.

FRESH-printed functional heart components

Institution: Carnegie Mellon University

Stage: prototype development

Carnegie Mellon researchers have continued to develop the FRESH (freeform reversible embedding of suspended hydrogels) method. The FRESH method is a technique that allows soft biological materials like collagen to be printed in complex 3D forms without collapsing.

In 2025, the team demonstrated the ability to fabricate components of the human heart, including valves, small-scale vasculature, and even contracting ventricles. These prototypes are not only valuable for surgical simulation and education but they could also lay the groundwork for future tissue grafts that integrate with a patient’s own heart structure.

From scaffold innovation to full-organ mimicry, 3D bioprinting is steadily extending its reach across the human body – both internal or external – whether that’s through biodegradable implants or shape-shifting biomaterials.

The institutions we’ve looked at here are a reflection of a growing maturity in both the science and the potential applications of printed biological structures.

If you liked this article of have any 3D-printing innovations you’d like to share with us, please contact: editor@electronicspecifier.com