Design and Development of Printable and Injectable Bio-Hybrid Inks for Tissue Engineering and Regeneration

Within this work we applied the principles of biomimicry to develop printable and injectable gealtine-based bio-hybrid inks to target the regeneration of three different tissues: chondral tissue, bone tissue and neural tissue.
Starting by the same natural biopolymer, gelatine, derived by hydrolysis of collagen, the main human body extra-cellular matrix (ECM) constituent, we exploited different process technologies, functionalization, and crosslinking techniques to develop devices suitable for the targeted tissues engineering.
More specifically, we performed a process comparison among two process technology, three-dimensional printing, and mould casting, for the realization of three-dimensional scaffolds for chondral regeneration. We developed nano-hydroxyapatites (nHAs) functionalized bioinks embedding human bone marrow stem cells (hBMSCs) and possible to crosslink with visible (VIS) light for bone regeneration and we designed and realized an in-vivo injectable and in-situ crosslinkable conductive ink for neural regeneration.
An all-round characterization of the crucial aspects for each device was thoroughly performed, highlighting the main achievements and hindrances, as well as the main aspects overall possible to be improved.