3D Biomaterial Microarrays for Regenerative Medicine: Current State-of-the-Art, Emerging Directions and Future Trends

Three dimensional (3D) biomaterial microarrays hold enormous promise for regenerative medicine because of their ability to accelerate the design and fabrication of biomimetic materials. Such tissue‐like biomaterials can provide an appropriate microenvironment for stimulating and controlling stem cell differentiation into tissue‐specific lineages. The use of 3D biomaterial microarrays can, if optimized correctly, result in a more than 1000‐fold reduction in biomaterials and cells consumption when engineering optimal materials combinations, which makes these miniaturized systems very attractive for tissue engineering and drug screening applications. Three‐dimensional (3D) biomaterial microarrays hold enormous promise for regenerative medicine and drug‐screening applications due to their ability to accelerate the design and fabrication of biomimetic materials and evaluate drug efficacy in a high‐throughput manner. Here, recent progress in 3D microarray technology is highlighted and some of the key applications of 3D microarray platforms in stem cell research, tissue engineering, and drug‐screening studies are discussed.