3D printed hydrogel-based scaffolds for tissue regeneration

Abstract

Tissue engineering is an emerging technology whose efforts are aimed towards repairing and regenerating injured tissues by developing bioactive scaffolds. Recently, scaffolds made of hydrogels have become interesting candidates for tissue engineering due to their tunable structures that allow to obtain constructs with a wide range of properties. However, incorporating cells into them and allowing cell proliferation and differentiation has been a challenge for tissue engineers in the past years. In this context, the aim of this project was to develop biocompatible bioinks capable of forming self-supportive 3D scaffold able to host cells. To achieve this challenge, different sets of bioinks were tested. Firstly, different general formulations based on alginate pluronic and gelatin were tested. In a second group of formulations, pluronic was removed to assess cell viability. The last group of formulations was based on a mixture of alginate, collagen and hydroxyapatite nanoparticles, focusing on a putative application in bone tissue. All formulations were characterized in terms of morphology, degradation and cell viability. In conclusion, gelatin-containing bioinks tended to be weaker than collagen-hydroxyapatite ones. However, there was no significant difference in cell viability studies between all of them