Abstract

A novel cell-printing process supplemented with an electrohydrodynamic method to obtain submicron scale cell-laden struts

Jong Han Ha, Research Assistant, Sungkyunkwan University

Cell-printing technology has been studied widely in tissue engineering applications due to its advantages for obtaining multiple cell embedding and homogeneous cell-distributed structure. However, the technology has one important limitation to fabricate controllable submicron-scale cell-laden hydrogel struts. The submicron diameter of the cell-laden struts, which can be used in obtaining three dimensional (3D) cell-laden structures, can significantly affect the controllability of cell release from the cell-laden hydrogel. In order to overcome the challenge, we propose a new cell printing process by combining a conventional cell-printing process with electrohydrodynamic method. This combined process is capable of fabricating cell-laden struts thinner than 50 µm with reasonable initial cell-viability over 90 %. To manipulate the strut sizes controllably and maintain reasonable cell-viability, we observed the effect of various concentrations of alginate-based bioink and electric field strengths.