Monday  |  Salon 8  |  05:50 PM–06:10 PM

#16125, Contraction-Driven Lamination of 3D Bioprinted Tissues

In vitro engineered tissue models require controlled spatial placement of different cell populations in contact with one another to mimic the heterogeneous structure of many tissues. One way to potentially create such structures is to use multi-material 3D bioprinting. However, the precision and complexity of 3D bioprinted structures are severely limited with multi-material approaches by successive deposition of cell populations disturbing the preceding populations. To sidestep this limitation of multi-material printing, we have developed an approach that allows depositing cell populations at moderate distances from one another, leveraging the strong contractile behavior of one of the populations to converge around and laminate to the other population. In this talk, I will present several 3D printed micropatterns of hepatocytes, endothelial cells, epithelial cells, and fibroblasts that exhibit lamination and self-assembly into heterogeneous structures driven by contraction of simple 3D printed fibroblast structures. We hope that this technique will lead to improved basic understanding of collective contractile cell mechanics in 3D and will, in turn, guide the development of new biofabrication approaches to tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

Vignesh Subramaniam   University of Florida
Thomas Angelini   University of Florida