Establishing particle alignments in extrusion-based bioprinting system

Abstract

In recent years, 3D bioprinting has been under the limelight of tissue engineering scientists for its’ potential in providing valuable solutions to needy patients in organ replacement. Owing to scarcity of organs and massive patients that require it, scientists resort to produce the organs using the technology. In bioprinting, cells are often deposited in the biomaterials as to promote attachment of cells and hence uniformly distributed in the tissues. There are however, limitations to the tissues produced using the technology as there are drawbacks in the alignment of particles in the printed strands. Therefore the motivation of this project is to explore the factors affecting the performance of bioprinter and hence eventually be able to improve control in particle alignments. Gelatin was selected as the medium in the project and cells incorporated in the flow of gelatin were investigated. A stage speed factor was deployed to study the optimum stage speed in printing the gelatin corresponding to the flow rate. Several factors were investigated to characterize the particle alignment in gelatin flow. They are average distance between cells, average number of cells and average distance between cells and centreline.