Journal
APPLIED MATERIALS TODAY
Volume 23, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.apmt.2021.101013
Keywords
Tissue engineering; Hydrogel microfibers; 3D biological models; Cancer models; Vascular fibers
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Funding
- European Research Council [ERC-2012-ADG 20120216-321266, PD/BD/135253/2017]
- Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT)
- Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [PD/BD/135253/2017] Funding Source: FCT
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Microfluidic manipulation of hydrogels is a powerful tool for recapitulating functional biological architectures, and by tuning material properties and flow conditions, complex multi-compartment fibers can be created.
The microfluidic manipulation of hydrogels is a powerful tool to recapitulate functional biological architectures. A wide range of flow configurations and chip designs have been employed to create microfibers with increasingly complex shapes and compositions requiring individually engineered setups. Distinctly, we demonstrate how one single 3D hydrodynamic flow-focusing chip can be used to obtain a continuous flow of hydrogel precursors, which rearrange themselves based on viscosity and applied pressures. These can crosslink into fibers with a variety of new multi-compartment shapes down to yet unreported minimal dimensions. To prove the potential of 3D flow-focusing for the biofabrication of complex, multi-compartment structures, we tuned material properties and flow conditions to obtain ribbonlike cancer/basement-membrane/stroma models; core-shell vascular-like structures and networks; and multi-chemistry fibers integrating stem cells, biomaterials, and pro-differentiation hydrophobic molecule depots. This innovative biofabrication method can be valuable for the recreation of a broad range of complex biological architectures and micro-modeling of distinct 3D environments. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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