Hybrid Multifunctional 3D bioprinting systems

Successfully fabricating complex living tissue structures demands carefully designed tissue scaffolds that mimic complex native tissues, which 3D bioprinting aims to achieve by creating 3D mimics of natural tissues. The fabrication of functional 3D tissues is challenging due to the limitation of oxygen and nutrient transport to cells inside the printed scaffold. Among the numerous bioprinting techniques recently developed and advanced, none of them are adequate to fabricate tissues with multiple cells and 3D blood vessel networks. The extrusion bioprinting has evolved to a freeform reversible embedding of suspended hydrogels (FRESH), enabling suspending 3D structure printing in the supporting gel bath. Stereolithography (SLA) bioprinting also has evolved to a volumetric SLA (VSLA) bioprinting, enabling high-speed 3D bioprinting by the light projection of 2D slices of the pre-loaded 3D models from all possible angles, while the bioink container rotates around itself. Here, we will develop a hybrid bioprinting system by integrating the FRESH extrusion bioprinting with the VSLA bioprinting system to create a solid organ (e.g., liver) with blood vessel networks. The integration requires elaborately tuned physical properties of bioinks to be suitable for the bioprinting process while maintaining the essential biological characteristics (e.g., biocompatibility, cell adhesion, and cell interactions).

Faculty Supervisor:

Keekyoung Kim

Student:

Partner:

Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM)

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Health and Related Sciences & Technology; Advanced Manufacturing

University:

University of Calgary

Program: