3D bioprinting is a pioneering technology that enables the recapitulation of unique features of complex human tissue and organs with high process flexibility. This issue of Essays in Biochemistry (volume 65, issue 3) covers various strategies of 3D bioprinting with versatile printable biomaterials and its applications in mimicking human physiology and disease status for developing next-generation therapeutics. The cover images represent a variety of shapes of bioprinted cardiac tissue constructs for in vitro modeling and drug testing applications (images courtesy of Andrew W. Daly et al. (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21029-2) (top-left), Justin Liu et al. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biomaterials.2020.120204) (top-right), Zhan Wang et al. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actbio.2018.02.007) (bottom-left), and Nadav Noor et al. (https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.201900344) (bottom-right)).