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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Polyelectrolyte gelatin-chitosan hydrogel optimized
for 3D bioprinting in skin tissue engineering
1*
1,2
2
Wei Long Ng , Wai Yee Yeong and May Win Naing
1 Singapore Centre for 3D Printing (SC3DP), School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technologi-
cal University (NTU), 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798, Singapore
2 Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech), Agency for Science, Technology and Research, 71
Nanyang Drive, Singapore 638075, Singapore
Abstract: Bioprinting is a promising automated platform that enables the simultaneous deposition of multiple types of
cells and biomaterials to fabricate complex three-dimensional (3D) tissue constructs. Collagen-based biomaterial used
in most of the previous works on skin bioprinting has poor printability and long crosslinking time. This posed an im-
mense challenge to create 3D constructs with pre-determined shape and configuration at high throughput. Recently, the
use of chitosan for wound healing applications has attracted huge attention due to its attractive traits such as its antimi-
crobial properties and ability to trigger hemostasis. In this paper, we optimized polyelectrolyte gelatin-chitosan hydrogel
for 3D bioprinting. Modification to the chitosan was carried out via the oppositely charged functional groups from chi-
tosan and gelatin at a specific pH of ~pH 6.5 to form polyelectrolyte complexes. The polyelectrolyte hydrogels were
evaluated in terms of physical interactions within polymer blend, rheological properties (viscosities, storage and loss
modulus), printing resolution at varying pressures and feed rates and biocompatibility. The polyelectrolyte gela-
tin-chitosan hydrogels formulated in this work was optimized for 3D bioprinting at room temperature to achieve high
shape fidelity of the printed 3D constructs and good biocompatibility with fibroblast skin cells.
Keywords: 3D printing, bioprinting, rapid prototyping, additive manufacturing, skin tissue engineering
*Correspondence to: Wai Yee Yeong, Singapore Centre for 3D Printing (SC3DP), School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering,
Nanyang Technological University (NTU), 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798, Singapore; Email: wyyeong@ntu.edu.sg
Received: October 22, 2015; Accepted: December 17, 2015; Published Online: December 29, 2015
Citation: Ng W L, Yeong W Y and Naing M W, 2016, Polyelectrolyte gelatin-chitosan hydrogel optimized for 3D bioprinting in skin
tissue engineering. International Journal of Bioprinting, vol.2(1): 53–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.18063/IJB.2016.01.009
1. Introduction epidermal and dermal regions of the skin plays nu-
T liferation to manipulation of stem cell fate. Bioprint-
merous roles ranging from regulation of cellular pro-
issue engineering has emerged as a multi-dis-
ciplinary field that involves clinicians, scien-
ing, which is an emerging technology, can be defined
tists and engineers to create anatomically rele-
vant tissue constructs that alleviate the shortage of as “the use of 3D printing technology that incorpo-
rates viable living cells with biomaterials to fabricate
[1]
[3]
donor tissues/organs . Despite major advancements sophisticated tissues/organs” . The bioprinting tech-
in the field of tissue engineering, simple cell seeding nology not only enables the simultaneous deposition
over pre-formed polymeric scaffolds is not sufficient of different biomaterials and multiple cell types, but
to fully replicate the sophisticated cell-matrix interac- also provides flexibility in the design and fabrication
[2]
tions within the native tissues . The heterogeneity in of customizable patient-specific tissue-engineered
[4]
extracellular matrix (ECM) composition within both constructs , demonstrating great potential for fabrica-
Polyelectrolyte gelatin-chitosan hydrogel optimized for 3D bioprinting in skin tissue engineering. © 2016 Wei Long Ng, et al. This is an Open Access
article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/lic-
enses/by-nc/4.0/), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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