Dec 27, 2017 | By David
3D bio-printing technology is advancing at a remarkable rate, and it should only be a matter of time before we see fully-functional organs and other complex tissues being built from scratch, ready to be transplanted into a patient in need. For now, researchers are continuing to work on some of the technical issues that still need to be faced at various stages of the bio-printing process. A team in Osaka recently made some serious progress in this field, coming up with a new way to get bio-ink droplets to stick together, making use of special enzymes.
Surgery and regenerative medicine of all kinds stands to benefit greatly from the improvement of 3D bio-printing. The most promising bio-printing method that has been demonstrated so far uses a special ‘bio-ink’, which is extruded to form a scaffold for the growth of an organic tissue. The ink is laden with stem cells which can be induced to differentiate in specifically directed ways, in order to form a particular type of tissue. Balancing the self-adhesion of the ink with its flow rate and its compatibility with particular cell types remains a challenge, however.
Shinji Sakai of the University of Osaka was the lead author of a paper ‘Drop-on-drop Multimaterial 3D Bioprinting Realized by Peroxidase-mediated Cross-linking’, recently published in the journal Macromolecular Rapid Communications. According to Sakai, "Printing any kind of tissue structure is a complex process. The bio-ink must have low enough viscosity to flow through the inkjet printer, but also needs to rapidly form a highly viscose gel-like structure when printed. Our new approach meets these requirements while avoiding sodium alginate. In fact, the polymer we used offers excellent potential for tailoring the scaffold material for specific purposes."
The innovation that the team made was to use a special enzyme, horseradish peroxidase. This mediates the hydrogelation process, allowing cross-links between phenyl groups of an added polymer in the presence of the oxidant hydrogen peroxide. The technique negates the need for sodium alginate, a substance that can sometimes cause problems in terms of the ink’s compatibility with certain cell types.
The use of hydrogen peroxide has been avoided in the past as it can be damaging to cells, but with this approach the team made sure to carefully tune the delivery of cells and hydrogen peroxide in separate droplets, so as to limit their contact and keep the cells alive. Their efforts were remarkably successful, with more than 90 percent of the cells in biological test gels being proven to be viable when they were prepared in this way. A number of complex test structures were also capable of being grown from different types of cells.This points the way forward for the technique to be implemented as part of a more advanced process.
"Advances in induced pluripotent stem cell technologies have made it possible for us to induce stem cells to differentiate in many different ways," co-author Makoto Nakamura says. "Now we need new scaffolds so we can print and support these cells to move closer to achieving full 3D printing of functional tissues. Our new approach is highly versatile and should help all groups working to this goal."
Posted in 3D Printing Application
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