A key limitation preventing the widespread use of cell-based additive manufacturing is the lack of suitable bio-inks that are cell-compatible and have the required properties for printing. Current challenges of many commonly used bio-inks include difficulty maintaining a homogeneous cell suspension within the ink cartridge, preventing long-term exposure to photo-activators, avoiding cell damage during extrusion, customizing the printed matrix properties to facilitate cell-matrix interactions, and printing within a bath to prevent cell dehydration. In response, we have designed a new family of tunable biomaterials specifically for cell-based additive manufacturing. These biomaterials undergo two distinct stages of crosslinking to achieve the required viscoelastic properties for 3D bio-printing applications. Within the print-cartridge, the biopolymers undergo dimeric peptide hetero-assembly to form a weak gel network. This gel network maintains an indefinite homoegenous suspension of encapsulated cells and is easily shear-thinned to enable extrusion at low pressures. Upon printing into an aqueous bath with divalent cations, the biopolymers undergo ionic crosslinking to reinforce the network and form a stable scaffold. Human adipose-derived stem cells can spread and proliferate within these scaffolds and maintain high viability. Variation of the biopolymer design enables tunable control over the final scaffold viscoelastic properties and biodegradation rates.

Peptide-crosslinking of biomaterials for 3D bio-printing

254th National Meeting (2017)

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