Jana Papse

Master student

Investigation of electroactive, 3D-printed ADA-GEL-conductive polymer scaffolds

 

Supervisors: Thomas Distler, Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Aldo R. Boccaccini

Bioprinting is known as an attractive approach to process hydrogels and to create biomimetic tissue constructs due to the ability to rapidly manufacture complex patterns in a layer by layer approach engineering [1]. It has been shown that electrical stimulation of the cellular environment qualitatively affects the behavior of cells. Increasing the intensity of electrical stimulation leads to higher preosteoblast proliferation whereas too high electrical stimulation may lead to cell death [2]. One way to achieve electrical conductivity of a scaffold is by adding electrically conductive polymers. The combination of a hydrogel scaffold with cells and growth factors may help to solve one of the challenges of the medical science of orthopedics, which is the successful long-term treatment of cartilage damage. The aim of this Master thesis is to create 3D-printed scaffolds consisting of ADA-GEL hydrogel [3]. The influence of the lyophilization temperature, resulting porosity, and interfacial polymerization with a conductive polymer on the cell growth and proliferation will be investigated. The final objective of this project will be to assess the possible influence of electrically conductive polymers on the cell viability of functionalized ADA-GEL scaffolds.

[1] Li, Lan, Fei Yu, Liming Zheng, Rongliang Wang, Wenqiang Yan, Zixu Wang, Jia Xu, et al. “Natural Hydrogels for Cartilage Regeneration: Modification, Preparation and Application,” Journal of Orthopaedic Translation, Degenerative musculoskeletal diseases: pathology and treatments, 17 (2019) 26–41.

[2] C. Chen, X. Bai, Y. Ding, and I.-S. Lee, “Electrical stimulation as a novel tool for regulating cell behavior in tissue engineering”, Biomaterials Research, 23 (2019) 25. doi: 10.1186/s40824-019-0176-8.

[3] F. Ruther, et al., “Biofabrication of vessel-like structures with alginate di-aldehyde—gelatin (ADA-GEL) bioink”, Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Medicine 30 (2018), 8.