AVS 56th International Symposium & Exhibition
    Inkjet Technology: Printing, Materials Processing, and Microfluidics Fundamentals Topical Conference Thursday Sessions
       Session IJ+BI+MN+SE+AS-ThM

Invited Paper IJ+BI+MN+SE+AS-ThM3
Inkjet Printing for Bioengineering Applications

Thursday, November 12, 2009, 8:40 am, Room B3

Session: Inkjet Technology: Novel and Emerging Applications
Presenter: T. Boland, Clemson University
Correspondent: Click to Email
We will present the inkjeting of bioink, which may include active compounds such as drugs and living cells as well as non-active, scaffolding materials to build two- and three-dimensional constructs for medical treatment. The technology faces several limitations that present interesting engineering opportunities. The nature and scope of the problems will be discussed in the context of the fabrication of microvasculature. The current tissue-engineering paradigm is that successfully engineered thick tissues must include vasculature. As biological approaches alone such as VGEF have fallen short of their promises, one may look for an engineering approach to build microvasculature. Layer-by-layer approach for customized fabrication of cell/scaffold constructs have shown some potential in building complex 3D structures. With the advent of cell printing, one may be able to build precise human microvasculature with suitable bioink. Human Microvascular Endothelial Cells (HMEC) and fibrin were studied as bioink for microvasculature construction. Endothelial cells are the only cells to compose the human capillaries and also the major cells of blood vessel intima layer. Fibrin has been already widely recognized as tissue engineering scaffold for vasculature and other cells, including skeleton/smooth muscle cells and chondrocytes. In the study presented here, we precisely fabricated micron-sized fibrin channels using a drop-on- demand polymerization. This printing technique uses aqueous processes that have been shown to induce little, if any, damage to cells. When printing HMEC cells in conjunction with the fibrin, we found the cells aligned themselves inside the channels and proliferated to form confluent linings. Current studies to characterize the biology and functionality of these engineered microvascular structures will be presented. These data suggests that a combined simultaneous cell and scaffold printing can promote HMEC proliferation and microvasculature formation.