Extrusion-based three-dimensional (3D) printing has recently become a major field that provides significant benefits, as it is principally employed to fabricate 3D scaffolds, exploiting soft biomaterials. The hydrogel-based ink requires crucial properties, such printability and fidelity the appropriate structure. However, typically uses trial error techniques achieve structure, which wastes mat...

BACKGROUND Bone loss during trauma, surgeries, and tumor resection often results in critical-sized bone defects that need to be filled with substitutionary materials. Complications associated with conventional grafting techniques have led to the development of bioactive tissue-engineered bone scaffolds. The potential application of hydrogels as three-dimensional (3D) matrices in tissue engineer...

INTRODUCTION Surface topography and electrical field stimulation are important guidance cues that aid the organization and contractility of cardiomyocytes in vivo. We report here on the use of these biomimetic cues in vitro to engineer an implantable contractile cardiac tissue. METHODS Photocrosslinkable collagen-chitosan hydrogels with microgrooves of 10 µm, 20 µm and 100 µm in width were fa...

In the present work, a novel interpenetrating polymer network (IPN) hydrogel composed of crosslinked chitosan and poly(acryl acid) was prepared by crosslinking using glutaraldehyde. The model drug, cis-platin, was loaded into the resulted IPN hydrogel. Water absorption of the hydrogel could be switched on and off swiftly by control of pH of the surrounding environment. Therefore, the synthesize...

At the Freiburger Materialforschungszentrum we have developed a new process (3DBioplotting) that permits most kind of polymers and biopolymers to be used in 3D scaffold design, including hydrogels (e.g. collagen, agar), polymer melts (e.g. PLLA, PGA, PCl) and twocomponent systems (e.g. chitosan, fibrin). Cells can be incorporated within the construction process, making this an ideal Rapid Proto...