Freeform inkjet printing of cellular structures with bifurcations.
Organ printing offers a great potential for the freeform layer-by-layer fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) living organs using cellular spheroids or bioinks as building blocks. Vascularization is often identified as a main technological barrier for building 3D organs. As such, the fabrication of 3D biological vascular trees is of great importance for the overall feasibility of the envisioned organ printing approach. In this study, vascular-like cellular structures are fabricated using a liquid support-based inkjet printing approach, which utilizes a calcium chloride solution as both a cross-linking agent and support material. This solution enables the freeform printing of spanning and overhang features by providing a buoyant force. A heuristic approach is implemented to compensate for the axially-varying deformation of horizontal tubular structures to achieve a uniform diameter along their axial directions. Vascular-like structures with both horizontal and vertical bifurcations have been successfully printed from sodium alginate only as well as mouse fibroblast-based alginate bioinks. The post-printing fibroblast cell viability of printed cellular tubes was found to be above 90% even after a 24 h incubation, considering the control effect.
['Christensen|Kyle|K|', 'Xu|Changxue|C|', 'Chai|Wenxuan|W|', 'Zhang|Zhengyi|Z|', 'Fu|Jianzhong|J|', 'Huang|Yong|Y|']
D000464:Alginates D000818:Animals D021522:Bioartificial Organs D001672:Biocompatible Materials D062028:Bioprinting D001808:Blood Vessels D002470:Cell Survival D004867:Equipment Design D005347:Fibroblasts D020723:Glucuronic Acid D006603:Hexuronic Acids D051379:Mice D041681:NIH 3T3 Cells D018919:Neovascularization, Physiologic D023822:Tissue Engineering D054457:Tissue Scaffolds
inkjetting cell viability liquid support predictive compensation three-dimensional bioprinting