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Functionalized alginate-based bioinks for microscale electrohydrodynamic bioprinting of living tissue constructs with improved cellular spreading and alignment

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Abstract

Bioprinting has been widely investigated for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications. However, it is still difficult to reconstruct the complex native cell arrangement due to the limited printing resolution of conventional bioprinting techniques such as extrusion- and inkjet-based printing. Recently, an electrohydrodynamic (EHD) bioprinting strategy was reported for the precise deposition of well-organized cell-laden constructs with microscale filament size, whereas few studies have been devoted to develo** bioinks that can be applied for EHD bioprinting and simultaneously support cell spreading. This study describes functionalized alginate-based bioinks for microscale EHD bioprinting using peptide grafting and fibrin incorporation, which leads to high cell viability (>90%) and cell spreading. The printed filaments can be further refined to as small as 30 μm by incorporating polyoxyethylene and remained stable over one week when exposed to an aqueous environment. By utilizing the presented alginate-based bioinks, layer-specific cell alignment along the printing struts could be observed inside the EHD-printed microscale filaments, which allows fabricating living constructs with cell-scale filament resolution for guided cellular orientation.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2018YFA0703003), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52125501), the Key Research Project of Shaanxi Province (Nos. 2021LLRH-08, 2020GXLH-Y-021, and 2021GXLH-Z-028), the Youth Innovation Team of Shaanxi Universities and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

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  1. Zhennan Qiu and Hui Zhu have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, **’an Jiaotong University, **’an, 710049, China

    Zhennan Qiu, Hui Zhu, Yutao Wang, Ayiguli Kasimu, Dichen Li & Jiankang He

  2. NMPA Key Laboratory for Research and Evaluation of Additive Manufacturing Medical Devices, **’an Jiaotong University, **’an, 710049, China

    Zhennan Qiu, Hui Zhu, Yutao Wang, Ayiguli Kasimu, Dichen Li & Jiankang He

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  1. Zhennan Qiu
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Contributions

ZNQ, YTW and AK were involved in the methodology and investigation; ZNQ contributed to the formal analysis; HZ assisted in writing—original draft; all authors participated in writing—review and editing; DCL and JKH contributed to the funding acquisition and supervision.

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Correspondence to Jiankang He.

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Qiu, Z., Zhu, H., Wang, Y. et al. Functionalized alginate-based bioinks for microscale electrohydrodynamic bioprinting of living tissue constructs with improved cellular spreading and alignment. Bio-des. Manuf. 6, 136–149 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42242-022-00225-z

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