AccScience Publishing / IJB / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/ijb.3898
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Bioprinting with superelastic and fatigue-resistant bioinks for large-sized tissue delivery

Ruoyu Chen1,2 Yijun Su1 Dazhi Chen1 Yinying Lu1 Jinghua Zhao3 Yali Zhang3 Quan Yuan3 Mingen Xu4* Rui Yao1,2*
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1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
2 Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
3 State Key Laboratory of Molecular Vaccinology and Molecular Diagnostics, National Institute of Diagnostics and Vaccine Development in Infectious Diseases, School of Public Health & School of Life Sciences, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian, China
4 Key Laboratory of Medical Information and 3D Bioprinting of Zhejiang Province, School of Automation, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang
IJB 2024, 10(5), 3898 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijb.3898
Submitted: 8 June 2024 | Accepted: 11 July 2024 | Published: 20 August 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/ )
Abstract

3D bioprinting technology is advancing rapidly to construct multi-scale preformed architectures that satisfy the demands of tissue regeneration. However, challenges remain in accurately delivering large-sized preformed architectures to the defect sites without being damaged by the mechanical environment in vivo. In this study, we proposed a versatile bioprinting strategy to fabricate large-sized architectures with remarkable injection capacity for geometry-independent minimally invasive tissue delivery. We design a novel hydrogel by mixing gelatin methacryloyl with poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) and photocrosslinking the mixture under a white light source. The hydrogel forms a reinforced crosslinking network, exhibiting superelasticity and fatigue resistance. We infer that the flexible chains of high-molecular-weight PEGDA and interconnected macropores of hydrogel contribute to the reinforcement mechanisms. With a decoupled bioprinting strategy, the bioink can be 3D printed into large-sized architectures with different geometries and tunable Poisson’s ratio. The printing architectures displayed excellent deformation and shape recovery capacity by compressing to less than 1% of the original size and fully recovering after injection. The injection capacity is geometry-independent, indicating the intrinsic properties of the hydrogel and allowing higher freedom for the structural design and geometry size of the architectures. The bioprinting process is compatible with genome-edited hepatic cells with high cell-bioprinting suitability, demonstrating high cell viability, a minimally altered transcriptomic profile after bioprinting, and a biocompatible microenvironment that supports cell survival and hepatic function maintenance. The cell-laden architectures express uncompromised injection capacity with unaffected cell viability after injection. This study presents a generalizable strategy for preparing and bioprinting with superelastic and fatigue-resistant bioinks into customized cell-laden architectures to facilitate minimally invasive large-sized tissue delivery.

Keywords
Tissue delivery
Bioprinting
Superelasticity
Fatigue resistance
Minimally invasive
Hepatic cells
Funding
The authors are sincerely grateful for the funding from the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFA1104600 and 2018YFA0109000).
Conflict of interest
Mingen Xu is a shareholder of Regenovo Biotechnology Co. Ltd, China. The other authors declare no competing financial interest.
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International Journal of Bioprinting, Electronic ISSN: 2424-8002 Print ISSN: 2424-7723, Published by AccScience Publishing