Bioprinting

Hello All,


Quick questions for all you bioprinting experts/ tissue engineers: 1. In bioprinting does the current technology allow for the printing of non-human tissue such as animal bone? When printing scaffolds for post-seeding, is there any way the scaffold can be removed/washed out after full tissue generation or will the scaffold material be imbedded into the tissue for good; and 3. Can cells scrapped off the outer surface of tissue (e.g.: bone, skin), be used to successfully seed a scaffold?

Eardnua1

Hi!I'm still at the beginning of bioprinting but i can try to give you few answers.1. Do you mean to literally print the bone or printing a bioink mixture of hydrogels and bone cells? I don't think you can actually do former (as far as i know), while you can find few works on the latter ( Bose 2013 -> review on the matter)2. In order to remove a particular scaffold you have to exploit some of its properies. An example would be printing low viscosity alginate scaffolds, keeping it crosslinked through a small concentration of Ca++ ions (using CaCl2 for example). Once you want to remove the hydrogel you reduce Ca++ concentration so that the alginate returns to liquid form and you can remove it. (look for Colosi 2016 paper on the matter)3. I don't understand what you mean. You can't just scrap cells and seed them. You should think carefully to the cell population to seed into a scaffold. Moreover in order to create a tissue you usually need more than a single cell population. There's a lot to be said/read on the matter, and obviously it also depends on what you want to achieve.