Abstract

Advanced 3D/4D Bioprinting for Complex Tissue Regeneration

Lijie Grace Zhang, Assistant Professor, The George Washington University

As an emerging biomanufacturing technique, 3D bioprinting has begun to show great promise in tissue/organ replacement. In addition, 4D bioprinting is a highly innovative additive manufacturing process to fabricate pre-designed, self-assembly structures with the ability to transform from one state to another directly off the bioprinter. It not only enables precise control over multiple compositions, spatial distributions, and architectural accuracy/complexity, but also offers a unique dynamic variation under specific stimulation to spatiotemporally regulate cellular behaviors. The main objective of our research is to develop novel biologically inspired nano or smart inks and advanced 3D/4D bioprinting techniques to fabricate the next generation of complex tissue/organ constructs (such as vascularized tissue, cardiac tissue, and neural tissue). Our pioneering work in designing novel 4D bioprinting smart and nanomaterials has shown great promise for various biomedical applications. We have successfully designed a series of novel 4D bioprinted tissue structures with multi-responsive abilities, including internal stress-induced, solvent-responsive, thermo-responsive, and light-responsive tissue constructs. These smart constructs exhibit excellent biocompatibility and have significantly enhanced various stem cell functions when compared to traditional bioprinting constructs, thus promising for complex tissue/organ regeneration.