AccScience Publishing / IJB / Volume 10 / Issue 2 / DOI: 10.36922/ijb.2337
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Oozing: An accessible technique to create 3D-printed scaffolds suitable for tissue engineering

Juan Crespo-Santiago1,2* Luis M. Delgado3 Rafa Madariaga4 Laia Millan1 Oriol Chico1 Pau Oliver1 Román Pérez3 Marta Otero-Viñas2,5*
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1 Elisava Barcelona School of Design and Engineering, University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia (UVIC-UCC), La Rambla 30, 08002, Barcelona, Spain
2 Tissue Repair and Regeneration Laboratory (TR2Lab), Institute for Research and Innovation in Life and Health Sciences in Central Catalonia (IrisCC), Ctra. de Roda, 70 08500, Vic, Barcelona, Spain
3 Bioengineering Institute of Technology, International University of Catalonia (UIC), Immaculada 22, 08017, Barcelona, Spain
4 Data Analysis and Modeling Research Group (DAM), Department of Economics and Business, University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia (UVIC-UCC), Sagrada Família 7, 08500, Vic, Spain
5 Faculty of Science, Technology, and Engineering. University of Vic – Central University of Catalonia (UVIC-UCC), C. de la Laura, 13, 08500, Vic, Barcelona, Spain
IJB 2024, 10(2), 2337 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijb.2337
Submitted: 29 November 2023 | Accepted: 22 January 2024 | Published: 12 March 2024
© 2024 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Tissue-engineered constructs require mimicking the extracellular matrix microenvironment of native tissue for better promoting cell growth. Commercial three-dimensional (3D) printers provide a versatile platform to fabricate tissue models, but they possess certain constraints regarding the reproduction of natural tissue structures due to the limited functionality of current slicing strategies and hardware. In this study, we present a new approach to 3D-printing polylactic acid (PLA) constructs with fibers in the range of microns by combining the oozing effect and algorithm-aided design (AAD) with a conventional fused deposition modeling printer. Three different oozing geometries were compared with two controls to explore their mechanical behavior and their cellular culture growth potential. Microscopic analysis revealed that oozing groups possessed higher porosity and statistically significantly thinner fibers than controls. Sodium hydroxide treatment reversibly increased the hydrophilicity of PLA without affecting the scaffolds’ mechanical properties in the compression tests. In addition, cell culture assays showed that oozing specimens exhibited a greater capacity of promoting SaOs-2 osteoblastic cell proliferation after 7 days in comparison with controls. We demonstrated that randomly distributed microfibered environments can be fabricated with an ordinary 3D printer utilizing the oozing effect and advanced AAD, resulting in improved biomimetic 3D constructs for tissue-engineering strategies.

Keywords
Oozing
3D printing
Tissue engineering
Cell cultures
Polylactic acid
Funding
The authors would like to thank the Government of Catalonia [2017 SGR 708 and 2021 XARDI 00002]; the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation Ramón y Cajal fellowship [RYC2018-025977-I]; MINECO/FEDER Project [RTI2018-096088-J-100]; and the PO FEDER of Catalonia 2014.2020 [project PECT Osona Transformació Social, Ref. 001-P-000382].
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Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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