Apr 14, 2016 | By Benedict

Researchers from the University of British Columbia have developed a new kind of biological ink which can be used to 3D print human tissue. The newly-developed compound reacts with normal light, as opposed to UV light, making it safer and cheaper than current alternatives.

Image: UBC

Stereolithography, the 3D printing technique pioneered by 3D Systems’ Chuck Hull back in the 1980s, is now widely used to create plastic 3D printed objects from curable resins. The process can, however, also be used to create living things: researchers have, for some time now, used UV light to “cure” special hydrogels—water-based gels containing human cells—in order to create synthetic tissue, in a process analogous to that of curing resins.

Unfortunately, although stereolithography demonstrably works as a bioprinting technique, its use of UV light is problematic, as that kind of light can damage the very tissue it is creating. Because of this, a group of UBC researchers decided to devise a new bioprinting material, one that can be used in a stereolithography-like process but which does not require UV light.

“UV light has been used for a long time, but it does DNA damage and causes cancer,” said Keekyong Kim, an assistant professor of engineering at UBC’s Okanagan campus. “By developing our own bio-ink, we can create bone, cartilage, and tissue without the risk that we will make the cells sick in the development process.”

The biomaterial created by Kim, alongside five other researchers, uses a photo-initiating chemical compound which allows the bio-ink to react to the light of a normal projector—the kind one can buy at Walmart. “With our photo-initiator, we were able to use a more conventional light source, which hadn’t really been tried in 3D bioprinting before,” Kim explained. “The result is we are able to make medical tissue in a way that is not only safer, it’s cheaper.”

According to the researchers’ abstract, the visible light crosslinking of the biomaterial was achieved by using a mixture of polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA) and gelatin methacrylate (GelMA) hydrogel with an eosin Y based photo-initiator. The system was able to produce a 3D structure at a resolution of 50 microns, with a cell viability of 85% for at least five days.

The other researchers on the project were Zongjie Wang, Raafa Abdulla, Benjamin Parker, Roya Samanipour, and Sanjoy Ghosh. The paper, titled “A simple and high-resolution stereolithography-based 3D bioprinting system using visible light crosslinkable bioinks,” was published in December 2015 in the journal Biofabrication.

 

 

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