Recent advances in 3D printing offer an excellent opportunity to address critical challenges faced by current tissue engineering approaches. Alginate hydrogels have been extensively utilized as bioinks for 3D bioprinting. However, most previous research has focused on native alginates with limited degradation. The application of oxidized alginates with controlled degradation in bioprinting has not been explored. Here, we prepared a collection of 30 different alginate hydrogels with varied oxidation percentages and concentrations to develop a bioink platform that can be applied to a multitude of tissue engineering applications. We systematically investigated the effects of two key material properties (i.e. viscosity and density) of alginate solutions on their printabilities to identify a suitable range of material properties of alginates to be applied to bioprinting. Further, four alginate solutions with varied biodegradability were printed with human adipose-derived stem cells (hADSCs) into lattice-structured, cell-laden hydrogels with high accuracy. Notably, these alginate-based bioinks were shown to be capable of modulating proliferation and spreading of hADSCs without affecting structure integrity of the lattice structures (except the highly degradable one) after 8 days in culture. This research lays a foundation for the development of alginate-based bioink for tissue-specific tissue engineering applications.

No abstract

Background: Implantable cardiac sensors have shown promise in reducing rehospitalization for heart failure (HF), but the efficacy of noninvasive approaches has not been determined. The objective of this study was to determine the accuracy of noninvasive remote monitoring in predicting HF rehospitalization. Methods: The LINK-HF study (Multisensor Non-invasive Remote Monitoring for Prediction of Heart Failure Exacerbation) examined the performance of a personalized analytical platform using continuous data streams to predict rehospitalization after HF admission. Study subjects were monitored for up to 3 months using a disposable multisensor patch placed on the chest that recorded physiological data. Data were uploaded continuously via smartphone to a cloud analytics platform. Machine learning was used to design a prognostic algorithm to detect HF exacerbation. Clinical events were formally adjudicated. Results: One hundred subjects aged 68.4±10.2 years (98% male) were enrolled. After discharge, the analytical platform derived a personalized baseline model of expected physiological values. Differences between baseline model estimated vital signs and actual monitored values were used to trigger a clinical alert. There were 35 unplanned nontrauma hospitalization events, including 24 worsening HF events. The platform was able to detect precursors of hospitalization for HF exacerbation with 76% to 88% sensitivity and 85% specificity. Median time between initial alert and readmission was 6.5 (4.2–13.7) days. Conclusions: Multivariate physiological telemetry from a wearable sensor can provide accurate early detection of impending rehospitalization with a predictive accuracy comparable to implanted devices. The clinical efficacy and generalizability of this low-cost noninvasive approach to rehospitalization mitigation should be further tested. Registration: URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov . Unique Identifier: NCT03037710.