3D Bioplotter Research Papers

Rising global demand for animal-products exceeds human-population growth. This unsustainable trend causes harmful ecological effects. Overfishing causes extinction of aquatic animals and a dangerous biodiversity loss harming aquatic ecosystems. Hence, replacing animal-based food, particularly beef and fish, with sustainable alternatives is an urgent vital global mission. Analogs of animal-based products include plant-based, tissue-culture-based and fermentation-based products. Fish analogs have mainly been based on plant-protein, fungi, tissue-culture, but to our knowledge, fish analogs made of algae, particularly macroalgae, as the major component and protein-source have not been reported. 3D-food-printing is a fast-developing technology, enabling formation of complex three-dimensional structures with various…

Cartilage injury is a common occurrence in the modern world. Compared with traditional treatment methods, bio-3D printing technology features better utility in the field of cartilage repair and regeneration, but still faces great challenges. For example, there is currently no means to generate blood vessels inside the scaffolds, and there remains the question of how to improve the biocompatibility of the generated scaffolds, all of which limit the application of bio-3D printing technology in this area. The main objective of this article was to prepare sodium alginate-xanthan gum-hydroxyapatite (SA-XG-HA) porous cartilage scaffolds that can naturally degrade in the human body…

Inspired by stimuli-tailored dynamic processes that spatiotemporally create structural and functional diversity in biology, a new hierarchical patterning strategy is proposed to induce the emergence of complex multidimensional structures via dynamic sacrificial printing of stimuli-responsive hydrogels. Using thermally responsive gelatin (Gel) and pH-responsive chitosan (Chit) as proof-of-concept materials, we demonstrate that the initially printed sacrificial material (Gel/Chit-H+ hydrogel with a single gelatin network) can be converted dynamically into non-sacrificial material (Gel/Chit-H+–Citr hydrogel with gelatin and an electrostatic citrate–chitosan dual network) under stimulus cues (citrate ions). Complex hierarchical structures and functions can be created by controlling either the printing patterns of…

Biology uses various cross-linking mechanisms to tailor material properties, and this is inspiring technological efforts to couple independent cross-linking mechanisms to create hydrogels with complex mechanical properties. Here, it is reported that a hydrogel formed from a single polysaccharide can be triggered to reversibly switch cross-linking mechanisms and switch between elastic and viscoelastic properties. Specifically, the pH-responsive self-assembling aminopolysaccharide chitosan is used. Under acidic conditions, chitosan is polycationic and can be electrostatically cross-linked by sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) micelles to confer viscoelastic and self-healing properties. Under basic conditions, chitosan becomes neutral, the electrostatic SDS–chitosan interactions are no longer operative, and…