Cell electrowriting: An advanced biofabrication approach for micrometre-scale living tissue fabrication

Abstract

The precise replication of native tissue microarchitecture remains a key challenge in biofabrication. While extrusion-based bioprinting fabricates multicellular constructs for regenerative medicine and drug testing, its typical resolution (∼100 μm) is insufficient to reproduce <50 μm features such as capillaries, aligned myofibres, etc. Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) approaches, such as melt electrowriting (MEW), address this limitation by producing polymer fibres of 1–500 μm in diameter by applying high voltages. Cell electrowriting (CEW) expands this principle to living systems, aiding the direct deposition of cell-laden hydrogel fibres with diameters of 5–40 μm, thereby supporting microscale cell placement and architectures that are unachievable with conventional methods. This review discusses the principles of CEW, strategies for bioink formulation, and assessments of biological performance, with emphasis on recent advances in CEW-based printing approaches. The potential applications, challenges, and outlook of CEW for tissue engineering are also discussed.