Engineered blood vessels generally recapitulate vascular function in vitro and can be utilized in drug discovery as a novel microphysiological system. Recently, various methods to fabricate vascular models in hydrogels have been reported to study the blood vessel functions in vitro; however, in general, it is difficult to fabricate hollow structures with a designed size and structure with a tens of micrometers scale for blood vessel tissue engineering. This study reports a method to fabricate the hollow structures in photodegradable hydrogels prepared in a microfluidic device. An infrared femtosecond pulsed laser, employed to induce photodegradation via multi-photon excitation, was scanned in the hydrogel in a program-controlled manner for fabricating the designed hollow structures. The photodegradable hydrogel was prepared by a crosslinking reaction between an azide-modified gelatin solution and a dibenzocyclooctyl-terminated photocleavable tetra-arm polyethylene glycol crosslinker solution. After assessing the composition of the photodegradable hydrogel in terms of swelling and cell adhesion, the hydrogel prepared in the microfluidic device was processed by laser scanning to fabricate linear and branched hollow structures present in it. We introduced a microsphere suspension into the fabricated structure in photodegradable hydrogels, and confirmed the fabrication of perfusable hollow structures of designed patterns via the multi-photon excitation process.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.