Volumetric Printing Across Melt Electrowritten Scaffolds Fabricates Multi‐Material Living Constructs with Tunable Architecture and Mechanics

Abstract

Major challenges in biofabrication revolve around capturing the complex, hierarchical composition of native tissues. However, individual 3D printing techniques have limited capacity to produce composite biomaterials with multi‐scale resolution. Volumetric bioprinting recently emerged as a paradigm‐shift in biofabrication. This ultrafast, light‐based technique sculpts cell‐laden hydrogel bioresins into 3D structures in a layerless fashion, providing enhanced design freedom over conventional bioprinting. However, it yields prints with low mechanical stability, since soft, cell‐friendly hydrogels are used. Herein, the possibility to converge volumetric bioprinting with melt electrowriting, which excels at patterning microfibers, is shown for the fabrication of tubular hydrogel‐based composites with enhanced mechanical behavior. Despite including non‐transparent melt electrowritten scaffolds in the volumetric printing process, high‐resolution bioprinted structures are successfully achieved. Tensile, burst, and bending mechanical properties of printed tubes are tuned altering the electrowritten mesh design, resulting in complex, multi‐material tubular constructs with customizable, anisotropic geometries that better mimic intricate biological tubular structures. As a proof‐of‐concept, engineered tubular structures are obtained by building trilayered cell‐laden vessels, and features (valves, branches, fenestrations) that can be rapidly printed using this hybrid approach. This multi‐technology convergence offers a new toolbox for manufacturing hierarchical and mechanically tunable multi‐material living structures.

Contribution of the ELRs to the development of advanced in vitro models

“…Various commonly used 3D bioprinting methods such as extrusion, inkjet, and laser-assisted methods contribute to the precise control of spatial cell distribution and the surrounding microenvironment ( Filipa Duarte Campos et al, 2016 ) (Derakhshanfar et al, n. d.) ( Li et al, 2020 ). Furthermore, innovative approaches such as liquid-in-liquid printing ( Luo et al, 2019 ) (Chen et al, n. d.), 3D Embedded Printing ( Miller et al, 2012 ; Kyle and Jessop, 2017 ; Aazmi et al, 2022 ; Wu et al, 2022a ; Wu et al, 2022b ; Li et al, 2022 ; Budharaju et al, 2024 ), Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels (FRESH) printing ( Hinton et al, 2015 ; Lee et al, 2019 ), Suspended Layer Additive Manufacturing (SLAM) ( Grigoryan et al, 2019 ; Noor et al, 2019 ; Senior et al, 2019 ; Shapira et al, 2020 ), and light-based vat-polymerization techniques such as Volumetric bioprinting (VAM) ( Bernal et al, 2019 ; 2022 ; Größbacher et al, 2023 ; Levato et al, 2023 ; Ribezzi et al, 2023 ), have emerged as a potential tool to print soft materials, which is particularly intricate ( Puertas-Bartolomé et al, 2020 ; Budharaju et al, 2024 ).…”

3D Bioprinting in Microgravity: Opportunities, Challenges, and Possible Applications in Space

“…Recently, multiple schemes for volumetric printing of multimaterial constructs, in which multiple cell types can even be compartmentalized into specific regions of the constructs, were demonstrated. [121,122] Potential applications include mimicking interfaces across different tissues (i.e., muscleto-tendon), and multi-walled tissues (i.e., blood vessels). The accuracy of volumetric printing and related processes is dependent on a variety of factors related to the optical properties (light absorptivity, refractive index, and light scattering of the resin and cells), physicochemical properties (viscosity, degree of substitution, etc.)…”

Advances in volumetric bioprinting

“…By cooperating with other 3DP technologies, VBP has brought some exciting results in heterogeneous tissue-like structures, such as multicellular blood vessel model and localized high-density cell bioprinting [81,85]. Recently, Größbacher et al group converged VBP with melt electrowriting (MEW) technology to bioprint intricate, multi-material and mechanical stability tubular structures [81]. Interestingly, inter or outer of MEW mesh (figure 8(D)) and micron-scale fenestrations such as permeable vessels in human body (figure 8(E)) could be volumetrically (bio)printed [89,90].…”

“…The traditional glass manufacturing process requires complex procedures with a high temperature melting and a casting process, facing great challenges in manufacturing equipment that can arbitrarily produce complex glass [81,97]. Next, we introduce the application of VBP in manufacturing both silica glass and silicon oxycarbide ceramics.…”