Abstract

3D-Biofabrication by Laser Cell Printing and Additive Scaffold Manufacturing with Novel Materials

Arnold Gillner, Director, Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology

Printing of living cells enables new concepts in cell biology, tissue engineering and cell based in vitro assays. In the presentation a highly automated single cell printing system, using Laser Induced Forward Transfer (LIFT) technology will be presented to transfer biomolecules, hydrogels and cells. Using adapted hydrogels cells and biomaterial can be printed with the generation of micro bubbles in the transfer layer. Especially its capability to analyze the transfer slide before the transfer process by optical methods is used for single cell selection and single cell printing with an accuracy of less than 50 µm. Using artificial generated microstructures from thiol-based resins three dimensional scaffolds wit incorporated cells can be produced to be used in tissue engineering and bioanalytics. In this work, we show a tool design, which enables us to localize single cells before the transfer process. By using an automated positioning system defined cell patterns can be generated in combination with variable ECM conditions. For higher cell viability we established a two-layered transfer layer and printed different cells like BHK, 3T3, K562 and HUVEC-Cells. With this approach the transfer volume is minimized and the cell survival rate of single cell transfer is more than 90%.