3D bioprinting 5 applications in bioengineering, partial organ repair in the future

Release date: 2016-08-19

The development of medical health benefits from the help of technology, such as 3D printing, the custom repair of body organs can be more easily achieved. Bioengineers predict that it can be used to make real cellular materials in the future. Such technologies can be the basis for personalized biomedical devices, tissue engineered skin, cartilage and bones, and even working bladders. Recently published in the special issue of "Biotechnology Trends", researchers have sorted out and thought about the progress of 3D bioprinting and the ideas that may be realized in the next few years or even decades.

This figure shows the process of printing high-throughput cells into microwells.

1

Custom chip organ

A 3D microengineering system that mimics the structure and function of human tissue – the “chip organ” – is a strong competitor in a cheap, efficient, and personalized medical competition. Lung, intestine, and pancreatic tissue can already be grown from human stem cells on the chip, allowing researchers to understand the physiological differences between these cells in different patients and to screen for drugs. The challenge of chip organ manufacturing is to rapidly expand the application of technology, while 3D printing can reduce the labor and expense required to build, direct, and meet the chip requirements.

"The intersection of 3D printed microfluidic manufacturing and bioprinting 3D organization is promising in single-step chip organ engineering and enables greater flexibility and throughput during the research process." From the University of Connecticut, working on 3D printing Savas Tasoglu (@SavasTasoglu), assistant professor of research and development for new applications in microfluidics and chip organs, said, "In future research, more advanced 3D bioprinters that print a range of viscous materials will be used in printing and manufacturing micro The fluid platform and the complex organization of the internal modeling of the device. This kind of closed integration system will greatly simplify the manufacture of the chip organ model and make the design of the chip organ iteratively faster."

3D printing of biological cells in a microfluidic device

3D printing technology continues to be successful in microfluidic device manufacturing and bioprinting applications, and with the rapid innovation in these two areas, 3D printing will likely become a tool for chip organ engineering in the next few years. Currently, the availability of biocompatible printing materials limits the structural size of microfluidic channels and bioprinted tissue. However, with the rapid improvement in 3D printing resolution, even low-cost consumer-grade 3D printers are likely to solve this problem in the near future.

2

Making skin

The study found that skin printed from cells inoculated on the surface of collagen colloids showed intercellular junctions and markers of biologically normal cells 10 days after culture. In another study, researchers can implant blood vessels on top of this layer of cells. From this point of view, skin bioprinting is closer to reality than imagined, but the researchers' considerations are still at an early stage of development in design options that are sufficient to help patients, especially burns and chronic wounds.

The skin is a complex organ with a well-defined spatial structure containing many types of cells. “The engineering composition of complex manufacturing machines to control manufacturing organizations has been implemented,” Wei Long Ng of Nanyang University of Science and Technology and the Singapore Institute of Science and Technology and their collaborators concluded that “although using bioprinting to create is equivalent to real The ultimate goal of skin with intact functional properties has not yet been achieved, but bioprinting has great potential in many important aspects of skin tissue engineering, including the generation of pigmented and/or aged skin models, vascular networks and hair follicles. In contrast, relatively simple skin constructs including keratinocytes and fibroblasts have been successfully manufactured using bioprinting techniques. In "in vivo" studies, these skin builds show some degree of similarity to natural skin and its function.

For the current state of the art of bioprinting, 3D skin constructs can be constructed based on imaging data and thicker tissues and organs that are relatively less difficult than others. As the previous study showed, after the technology matures, the printed skin structure will be very similar to natural skin tissue. Further development of skin bioprinting will enable the customization of autologous skin-compliant constructs for patient wounds in the future. Another interesting application is in-situ bioprinting of skin during wound treatment.

Graphical process for making skin using 3D printing technology

In terms of commercialization and regulation, the regulatory process and diversity of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine (TERM) constitute a huge challenge for the development of TERM. The successful commercialization of print structures depends to a large extent on regulatory and funding approvals. 3D printed skin constructs containing different biomaterials, cells and growth factors, the difficulty of regulatory approval is the increasing complexity and potential hazards of clinical research, important standards such as quality control and manufacturing procedures, for bioprinting It is all crucial.

3

Facial reconstruction

Although bones, cartilage, skin, muscles, blood vessels, and nerves can already be printed in the lab, the construction of more complex methods for patient mapping is still under development. Craniofacial reconstruction can help people with cancer or facial injuries, and work on these cell types has been completed, so it is clear that this technology deserves further research and development. In the short term, 3D printed stents can be used to improve spot defects in the lower jaw or other areas of the face.

Craniotomy, the structure is very complicated

Different bioprinting technologies have a promise of success, but because each tissue currently requires a specific technology, printing of multicellular tissue constructs is difficult. “The technology still has a long way to go due to the demand for quality manufacturing products for long-term (pre) clinical studies, smart polymers and, most importantly, bioprinting architectures.” Dafydd Visscher, a surgeon at the Free University Medical Center in Amsterdam, and His colleague said.

"Handheld bioprinters that transport cells to tissues such as skin and cartilage may be a promising method for treating external craniofacial tissue," Dafydd Visscher said. "Now, try to optimize bioprinting technology and enhance The self-repairing ability of craniofacial tissue should be a reasonable first step in the clinical application of bioprinting."

4

Multi-organ drug screening

3D bioprinting demonstrates that accurate models can improve the way we evaluate new drugs, such as generating "organs" composed of many types of cells, as well as tumor models with engineered blood vessels. Such measures can quickly monitor drug interactions in multiple organs in real time, but may require multiple iterations to achieve this, such as adding blood vessels, connecting organ models.

"With the development of new advanced bioprinting technologies, the development of physiologically relevant tissue models will be an important tool for drug development in the next decade," said Ibrahim Ozbolat and Weijie Peng of Binzhou University and Derya Unutmaz of the Jackson Genomics Laboratory. "With the integration of other 3D biomanufacturing and support technologies, on-chip bioprinting of organs/human models and microarrays will greatly reduce the elimination rate of new therapies in pre-clinical trials and significantly shorten the development of new drugs."

Comparison of bioprinted and non-bioprinted blood vessels

Bioprinted tissue models and microarrays are promising technologies in pharmaceuticals, especially in pharmacokinetics, toxicity, and anti-tumor assays. 3D bioprinting tissue models and microarrays for pharmaceutical use do not involve limitations on the safety and ethical issues that are more likely to reveal valuable relevant clinical data. Commercial products such as bioprint micro livers and -kidney arrays have recently attracted the interest of several companies.

5

Inserted blood vessel

The manufacture of 3D vascular networks within bioengineering organizations is necessary to ensure tissue survival and accurate replication of human morphology after transplantation. It focuses on stacking 2D cell layers or bioprinting 3D networks, which enables high levels of spatial control. However, creating a tissue with a network of blood vessels that can be directly attached to a patient's artery or vein is a major challenge.

"Current angiogenesis is currently considered to be one of the main obstacles to the large-scale conversion of tissue engineering to clinical applications," said Jeroen Rouwkema and Ali Khademhosseini, bioengineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. "Obviously, effective in engineering organizations." The method of composition achieves the highest level of control of the initial organization of the vascular structure."

The manufacture of vascular networks has now explored a variety of methods to model vascular cells.

When it comes to the vascular network of engineering organizations, recognizing that quality is more important than quantity is especially important. The key is not the number of vascular structures in a given volume in the tissue, but the amount of blood perfused through the vascular network and the distribution of that blood in the tissue volume. Therefore, the good organization and maturity of the vascular network is important. In the study, if the angiogenesis was over-stimulated, the number of blood vessels would be too much. Tracer perfusion experiments showed that such vascular perfusion was very poor.

Source: Arterial Network

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