Advanced healthcare materials | 2021
Viscous Fingering as a Rapid 3D Pattering Technique for Engineering Cell-laden Vascular-like Constructs.
Abstract
Tissues are much larger than the diffusion limit distance, so rapidly providing blood vessels to supply embedded cells inside tissues with sufficient nutrients and oxygen is regarded as a major strategy for the success of bioengineered large and thick tissue constructs. Here, a patterning technique, viscous fingering, was developed to bioengineer vascularized-like tissues within a few minutes. By controlling viscosity, flow rate, and the volume of photo-crosslinkable prepolymer, macro- and micro-scale vascular network structures could be precisely engineered using the Hele-Shaw cell we designed. After crosslinking, a vascular-like gel with fingering structures is formed between the bottom and top base gels, creating a sandwich-like structure. Cells could be incorporated into the fingers, bases, or both gels. The spreading and growth direction of the embedded cells was successfully controlled and guided by manipulating the physical properties of the fingering and base gels individually. Moreover, fingering was generated, connected, and surrounded prepared cell-laden microgels in base prepolymers to form prevascularized tissue-like constructs. Taken together, our 3D cell patterning technique extends the potential for modelling and fabricating large and stackable vascularized tissue-like constructs for both ex vivo and in vivo applications. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.