A close-up of tiny bioink droplets used to print organs shows live cells inside. Credit: American Chemical Society
Modified injket printers are promising new tools for creation of human tissue, potentialy leading to 3D printing of entire living organs. They are designed to use so-called bioink, a fluid material made of individual cells, to lay down rows of tissue. In terms of producing viable tissue that continues to grow and behave in optimal ways, it is important to deliver the bioinks at proper concentrations.
A team of American and Chinese scientists studied a bioink made of mouse fibroblast cells and sodium alginate hydrogel. They analyzed the breakup time, droplet size and velocity, and satellite formation of the resulting material and discovered that increasing the concentration of cells relative to the hydrogel produces smaller droplet sizes and leads to poor results overall. The full results, which should help push forward bioprinting technologies, have been published in journal Langmuir
Study in Langmuir: Study of Droplet Formation Process during Drop-on-Demand Inkjetting of Living Cell-Laden Bioink…
