China3D printingNet September 8th, a team of researchers from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University designed and3D bioprintingA highly realistic blood vessel model.
The model is made of a new nano-engineered, dedicated hydrogel bio-ink, and closely mimics the natural blood vessel function of real blood vessels and their disease response. The team hopes that its work will pave the way for advanced cardiovascular drug development, accelerate treatment approval, and completely eliminate the need for animal and human testing.
“A very unique feature of this nano-engineered bio-ink is that regardless of the cell density, it exhibits high printability and the ability to protect encapsulated cells from high shear forces during the bioprinting process,” the associate professor and co-author of the university Author Akhilesh Gaharwar said. Research. “It is worth noting that the 3D bioprinted cells maintain a healthy phenotype and remain viable for nearly a month after manufacturing.”
The blood vessel model can be 3D bioprinted using an extrusion-based system. The photo is from TAMU.
3D bioprinting and vascular diseases
According to the research team, vascular diseases such as aneurysms, peripheral artery disease, and thrombosis account for approximately 31% of global deaths. Although the numbers are distressing, it is reported that progress in cardiovascular drugs has slowed in the past two decades.
This can be attributed to the challenge of converting experimental treatments into approved treatments, which is largely due to the difference between in vitro and in vivo studies. Quite simply, we need more laboratory models that actually react like blood vessels in our body-this is where 3D bioprinting can help.
Through bioprinting, tissue structures can be embedded in real living cells and manufactured in a layer-by-layer manner. This makes it possible to design models with higher accuracy, allowing them to better mimic the natural structure of blood vessels. Unfortunately, the bio-ink materials required to achieve this goal are greatly limited in printability and their ability to deposit high-density living cells, rendering many of them ineffective in clinical settings.
Karli Gold ’20, a former doctoral student in biomedical engineering, collaborated with Akhilesh Gaharwar to develop his 3D bioprinted model. The photo is from TAMU.
Testing for disease and drug effects
To overcome the limitations of off-the-shelf bio-inks, Gaharwar and his team developed their own bio-inks. This new material is designed for anatomically accurate multicellular blood vessels and provides higher resolution for the macroscopic structure of blood vessels and the microstructure of tissues.
Gaharwar wrote: “Here, a new type of nano-engineered hydrogel-based cell-loaded bio-ink is introduced, which can be printed into 3D blood vessels to reproduce the physical and chemical microenvironment of the natural human vasculature. “
Bioinks include cultures of endothelial cells and vascular smooth muscle cells: the building blocks needed to accurately test the effects of diseases and the effects of drugs. It also has excellent printability and has even been shown to protect embedded living cells from the extrusion-based printing process. It is hoped that one day we can use 3D bioprinted blood vessel models to better understand the pathophysiology of vascular diseases and evaluate the efficacy of treatments and toxins in preclinical trials.
A 3D bioprinted blood vessel model in operation. The photo is from TAMU.
Blood vessels are not the only tissue that is bioprinted for drug development applications. Earlier this summer, volumetric 3D bioprinter manufacturer Ready3D used additive manufacturing to develop a miniature 3D printed live model of the human pancreas. Designed to promote diabetes medical testing, biological tissues containing stem cells can be printed in as little as 30 seconds.
Elsewhere, the Korean pharmaceutical company HK inno.N recently announced plans to use artificial 3D printed skin to test new autoimmune and dermatological drugs. The 3D printed meat will be used for in-depth research on the effectiveness of different dermatological drugs. If successful, these organizations can be used to replace animal testing, which is known to be an ongoing problem in the cosmetics industry.
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