Hydrogel Templates for Rapid Manufacturing of Bioactive Fibers and 3D Constructs

Ali Tamayol; Alireza Hassani Najafabadi; Bahar Aliakbarian; Elmira Arab-Tehrany; Mohsen Akbari; Nasim Annabi; David Juncker; Ali Khademhosseini

doi:10.1002/adhm.201500492

Hydrogel Templates for Rapid Manufacturing of Bioactive Fibers and 3D Constructs

Adv Healthc Mater. 2015 Oct;4(14):2146-2153. doi: 10.1002/adhm.201500492. Epub 2015 Aug 25.

Authors

Ali Tamayol^{1

2}, Alireza Hassani Najafabadi^{1

2}, Bahar Aliakbarian^{1

2}, Elmira Arab-Tehrany^{1

2}, Mohsen Akbari^{1

2

3}, Nasim Annabi^{1

2

3}, David Juncker^{4

5

6}, Ali Khademhosseini^{1

2

3

7}

Affiliations

¹ Biomaterials Innovation Research Center, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
² Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
³ Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
⁴ Department of Biomedical Engineering, McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre, McGill University, Montreal, H3A 0G1, Canada.
⁵ McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre, Montreal, H3A 2B4, Canada.
⁶ Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, McGill University, Montreal, H3A 0G1, Canada.
⁷ Department of Physics, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, 21569, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

Hydrogel templates are formed to entrap various pre-polymers prior to their crosslinking process. Upon the completion of the crosslinking process, an independent polymer network with the same fiber geometry is formed. The hydrogel template can be removed if necessary. As the proof-of-principle, fibers from various polymers are fabricated. The fabricated hybrid polymeric fibers are bioactive and can be bioprinted or assembled using textile processes. The approach can be used for creating complex 3D constructs for various applications.

Keywords: bioprinting; cell-laden fibers; fiber-based methods; sacrificial polymeric networks; tissue engineering.

Abstract

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