Dear Colleagues,

3D printing inspires many through its vast potential for full customization of 3D structures made of almost any kind of material. In particular, bio-based additive manufacturing employs naturally derived materials (e.g., proteins, polymers, bioactive compounds, and cells) to level-up medical devices (in tissue engineering) or the nutrition and organoleptic properties of foods (in food engineering). Even though aiming at different applications with different product requirements, the additive manufacturing processes in tissue and food engineering have much in common.

The growing field of cultivated meat/fish is a strong demonstration case. Structuring edible cellular structures in a layer-by-layer fashion is considered one of the most promising technologies available to develop more sustainable and suffering-free meat alternatives with customizable color, texture, appearance, flavor, and nutrition. Along with these developments, tissue engineers are creating more complex, multi-cellular structures to produce fully functional living tissues or 3D cell culture models.

With this Special Issue, we envisage fostering synergies and advances, and inspiring bio-based manufacturing research in these complementary fields.

We invite researchers to contribute to this Special Issue, e.g., on the following topics:

• Bio-based inks
• Tissue, meat, fish, plant cells, probiotics or fungi applications
• Structuring mechanisms
• Printing heads systems
• Personalization
• Rheology, Texture, FEA, flow-dynamics studies
• Scale-up approaches

Dr. Sara Oliveira
Guest Editors
Prof. Dr. Lorenzo M. Pastrana
Dr. Pablo Fuciños
Co-Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• 3D Printing
• 3D Food Printing
• Bioprinting
• 3D printing of biomaterials
• Plant-based meat/fish
• cell-based meat/fish
• Printability
• Texture
• Functionality
• Bio-based Inks