AccScience Publishing / IJB / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/ijb.3395
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RESEARCH ARTICLE

Mimicking human skin constructs using norbornene-pullulan-based hydrogels

Angela Cirulli1 ,  Livia Neves Borgheti-Cardoso1 ,  Núria Torras1* ,  Elena Martínez1,2,3*
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1 Biomimetic Systems for Cell Engineering Laboratory, Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Barcelona, Spain
2 Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red, Madrid, Spain
3 Department of Electronics and Biomedical Engineering, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
IJB 2024, 10(4), 3395 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijb.3395
Submitted: 9 April 2024 | Accepted: 24 May 2024 | Published: 3 July 2024
© 2024 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

There has been a huge demand for engineered skin tissues in the realms of both in vitro and in vivo applications. Selecting the right material scaffold is a critical consideration in making engineered skin tissues, since it should possess a good balance between elasticity and mechanical stability while promoting an adequate cell microenvironment to support both the dermal and the epidermal compartments of skin tissue. In this study, 3D-bioprinted norbornene-pullulan photocrosslinkable hydrogels were utilized as alternative scaffolds to produce epithelized dermal skin models. By employing visible light, 2.5 mm3 cell-laden hydrogels could be printed in 10 s. The thiol-ene photocrosslinking chemistry employed in this work enabled the formation of a well-defined extracellular matrix with orthogonal crosslinks, where encapsulated fibroblasts maintained high cellular viability rates. Through this method, an epidermal layer could be grown on top of the fibroblasts. The coexistence and interaction of human fibroblasts and keratinocytes were visualized by determining the expression of specific markers. This approach represents a promising starting point for the development of photocrosslinkable hydrogel-based human skin constructs by using thiol-ene norbornene chemistry, paving the way toward manufacture of complex in vitro models of human tissues.  

Keywords
Skin models
Photocrosslinkable hydrogels
Pullulan
Light-based 3D bioprinting
Funding
This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme (B-BRIGHTER project, grant agreement no. 101057894), the Department of Research and Universities of the Generalitat de Catalunya (2021 SGR 01495), and the CERCA Programme of the Generalitat de Catalunya. N.T. acknowledges the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCIN) for her Juan de la Cierva grant (IJC2019-040289-I, MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033). Views and opinions expressed in this work are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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International Journal of Bioprinting, Electronic ISSN: 2424-8002 Print ISSN: 2424-7723, Published by AccScience Publishing
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