Abstract

3-D Bio-Printed Glioblastoma-Vascular Niche

Guohao Dai, Associate Professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

3D printing offers great power and flexibility to allow on-demand control of material configurations thus has great potential in tissue engineering applications. Although 3D printing has been very successful in creating biomaterial scaffold (without cells) with custom designed geometries, its translation into creation of “live tissues” remains a significant challenge. In addition, maintaining the viability of thick tissue construct for tissue growth and maturation after the printing is challenging due to lack of vascular perfusion. In this talk, I will report the development of the 3-D bioprinting technology to create a multi-scale functional vascular network with perfusion within thick matrix. The bioprinted vascular network has a great potential in engineering vascularized thick tissues and vascular niches. It can also serve as a unique experimental tool for investigating fundamental vascular biology under 3D dynamic conditions. To demonstrate this capacity, we adapted an interdisciplinary approach combining patient-derived glioblastoma cells and 3-D bioprinting technology to create a model of glioblastoma-vascular niche. The bio-printed glioblastoma cells exhibit aggressive vascular invasion reminiscent the in vivo morphology and behavior. By real-time observation of cell-cell interactions in 3D glioma/vascular systems, our studies will lay the foundation for novel therapeutic development to curtail glioma invasion and improve GBM therapy. The 3-D vascular niche platform can also be easily adapted to other biological system and will serve as a unique tool to model stem cell interaction with vascular niches.