One of the challenges of bioprinting is to identify bioinks which support cell growth, tissue maturation, and ultimately the formation of functional grafts for use in regenerative medicine. The influence of this new biofabrication technology on biology of living cells, however, is still being evaluated. Recently we have identified a mitogenic hydrogel system based on alginate sulfate which potently supports chondrocyte phenotype, but is not printable due to its rheological properties (no yield point). To convert alginate sulfate to a printable bioink, it was combined with nanocellulose, which has been shown to possess very good printability. The alginate sulfate/nanocellulose ink showed good printing properties and the non-printed bioink material promoted cell spreading, proliferation, and collagen II synthesis by the encapsulated cells. When the bioink was printed, the biological performance of the cells was highly dependent on the nozzle geometry. Cell spreading properties were maintained with the lowest extrusion pressure and shear stress. However, extruding the alginate sulfate/nanocellulose bioink and chondrocytes significantly compromised cell proliferation, particularly when using small diameter nozzles and valves.

Bioprinting is an emerging technology in the field of tissue engineering as it allows the precise positioning of biologically relevant materials in 3D, which more resembles the native tissue in our body than current homogenous, bulk approaches. There is however a lack of materials to be used with this technology and materials such as the block copolymer Pluronic have good printing properties but do not allow long-term cell culture. Here we present an approach called nanostructuring to increase the biocompatibility of Pluronic gels at printable concentrations. By mixing acrylated with unmodified Pluronic F127 it was possible to maintain the excellent printing properties of Pluronic and to create stable gels via UV crosslinking. By subsequent elution of the unmodified Pluronic from the crosslinked network we were able to increase the cell viability of encapsulated chondrocytes at day 14 from 62% for a pure acrylated Pluronic hydrogel to 86% for a nanostructured hydrogel. The mixed Pluronic gels also showed good printability when cells where included in the bioink. The nanostructured gels were, with a compressive modulus of 1.42 kPa, mechanically weak, but we were able to increase the mechanical properties by the addition of methacrylated hyaluronic acid. Our nanostructuring approach enables Pluronic hydrogels to have the desired set of properties in all stages of the bioprinting process.

Layer-by-layer bioprinting is a logical choice for the fabrication of stratified tissues like articular cartilage. Printing of viable organ replacements, however, is dependent on bioinks with appropriate rheological and cytocompatible properties. In cartilage engineering, photocrosslinkable glycosaminoglycan-based hydrogels are chondrogenic, but alone have generally poor printing properties. By blending the thermoresponsive polymer poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) grafted hyaluronan (HA-pNIPAAM) with methacrylated hyaluronan (HAMA), high-resolution scaffolds with good viability were printed. HA-pNIPAAM provided fast gelation and immediate post-printing structural fidelity, while HAMA ensured long-term mechanical stability upon photocrosslinking. The bioink was evaluated for rheological properties, swelling behavior, printability and biocompatibility of encapsulated bovine chondrocytes. Elution of HA-pNIPAAM from the scaffold was necessary to obtain good viability. HA-pNIPAAM can therefore be used to support extrusion of a range of biopolymers which undergo tandem gelation, thereby facilitating the printing of cell-laden, stratified cartilage constructs with zonally varying composition and stiffness.

Epithelial organoids are simplified models of organs grown in vitro from embryonic and adult stem cells. They are widely used to study organ development and disease, and enable drug screening in patient-derived primary tissues. Current protocols, however, rely on animal- and tumor-derived basement membrane extract (BME) as a 3D scaffold, which limits possible applications in regenerative medicine. This prompted us to study how organoids interact with their matrix, and to develop a well-defined hydrogel that supports organoid generation and growth. It is found that soft fibrin matrices provide suitable physical support, and that naturally occurring Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) adhesion domains on the scaffold, as well as supplementation with laminin-111, are key parameters required for robust organoid formation and expansion. The possibility to functionalize fibrin via factor XIII-mediated anchoring also allows to covalently link fluorescent nanoparticles to the matrix for 3D traction force microscopy. These measurements suggest that the morphogenesis of budding intestinal organoids results from internal pressure combined with higher cell contractility in the regions containing differentiated cells compared to the regions containing stem cells. Since the fibrin/laminin matrix supports long-term expansion of all tested murine and human epithelial organoids, this hydrogel can be widely used as a defined equivalent to BME.

A "bottom up" strategy is proposed to synthesize high aspect ratio hydroxyapatite (and brushite) platelets, and combine them with amyloid fibrils into layered hybrid nanocomposites. Their hierarchical structure, despite the differences from natural bone, confers to the nanocomposites a density and elastic modulus matching those of cancellous bone. Evidence of good adhesion and spreading of human trabecular bone-derived pre-osteoblasts cells on these nanocomposites is provided.