Survival and Proliferative Ability of Various Living Cell Types after Laser-Induced Forward Transfer

Abstract

The survival, proliferation, and differentiation of freshly isolated and cultured cells were studied after absorbing film-assisted laser-induced forward transfer. Rat Schwann and astroglial cells and pig lens epithelial cells were used for transfer and the cells were cultured for 2 weeks after laser-pulsed transfer. All three cell types survived, proliferated, and differentiated under cell culture conditions and regained their original phenotype a few days after cell transfer. Time resolution studies have shown that the time required to accelerate the jets and droplets containing the cells was less than 1 micros and that the estimated minimum average acceleration of those ejected cells that reached a constant velocity was approximately 10(7) x g. This suggests that the majority of studied cells tolerated the extremely high acceleration at the beginning of the ejection and the deceleration during impact on the acceptor plate without significant damage to the original phenotype. These results suggest that the absorbing film-assisted laser-induced forward transfer technique appears to be suitable for several potential applications in tissue engineering and the biomedical tissue repair technologies.

3D bioprinting for cell culture and tissue fabrication

“…In the study by Hopp et al different cell types of SCs, astroglial cells and pig lens epithelial cells were deposited into gelatin. It was illustrated that the cells were able to survive, proliferate and differentiate after laser pulsed transfer [112]. Additionally, Hsieh and Hsu [113] developed a nerve graft made of NSCs-laden polyurethane (PU), which was successfully used in recovering nerve function in Zebrafish neural injury models.…”

Depth-controlled laser-induced jet injection for direct three-dimensional liquid delivery

“…LIFT is an established technique for cell deposition, with postprinting cell viability reaching > 95% [40,41]. Furthermore, previous studies showed that cell suspensions could withstand laser-induced acceleration and deceleration of the order of 10 6 −10 7 g and authors speculated that only the cells at the front of the jet were damaged [42,43]. By analogy, our laser-assisted system could potentially be viable for sensitive cell-seeded liquids as we estimate from time-resolved imaging that the maximum deceleration at impact is of the order of 10 6 g.…”

Solid-phase laser-induced forward transfer of variable shapes using a liquid-crystal spatial light modulator

“…Laser-induced forward transfer (commonly abbreviated to LIFT) is a direct-write technique that allows the selective transfer of many materials on a micrometer scale [1][2][3][4][5], including liquids [6] and living cells [7,8]. In the LIFT process, a thin film serves as a donor material that is to be transferred, which is referred to as the donor layer, see Fig.…”