Method to 3D Print Laboratory Grown Cells
Peter Brown | August 15, 2017Scientists at the University of Oxford have demonstrated how a range of human and animal cells can be 3D printed into high-resolution tissue constructs.
The ability to form living structures from cells grown in a lab could revolutionize regenerative medicine, allowing for the production of complex tissues and cartilage that would help support, repair or augment diseased and damaged areas of the body.
While there has been interest in using 3D printing it is difficult to accurately control the position of cells in 3D. The team devised a way to produce tissues in self-contained cells that help the structures keep their shape.
How They Did It
The cells were contained within protective nanolitre aqueous droplets wrapped in a lipid coating that could be assembled, layer-by-layer into living structures. This improves the survival rate of the individual cells and allowed the team to improve how they built each tissue one drop at a time to a more favorable resolution.
To make it useful, the artificial tissues have to mimic the behaviors and functions of the human body and the method allows for the fabrication of patterned cellular constructs, when fully grown can mimic natural tissues.
“We were aiming to fabricate three-dimensional living tissues that could display the basic behaviors and physiology found in natural organisms,” says Alexander Graham, 3D bioprinting scientist at the University of Oxford. “To date, there are limited examples of printed tissues, which have the complex cellular architecture of native tissues. Hence, we focused on designing a high-resolution cell printing platform, from relatively inexpensive components, that could be used to reproducibly produce artificial tissues with appropriate complexity from a range of cells including stem cells.”
With further development, the material could be used in healthcare worldwide, including reproducible human tissue models that the team could take to clinical animal testing.
“There are many potential applications for bioprinting and we believe it will be possible to create personalized treatments by using cells sourced from patients to mimic or enhance natural tissue function,” says Sam Olof, CTO of Oxford Synthetic Biology. “In the future, 3D bio-printed tissues maybe also be used for diagnostic applications—for example, for drug or toxin screening.”
The full research can be found in the journal Scientific Reports.