Structural and Thermal Patterning in 3D Bioprinted Hydrogels for Tissue Engineering

Abstract

Technologies for orchestrating cell behavior in engineered tissues through environmental or genetic control systems have immense potential to enhance our understanding of multicellular physiology and generate artificial tissues for therapeutic translation. In this work, we present a pair of technological innovations for controlling tissue architecture and cellular gene expression in engineered tissues. First, we describe our stereolithographic approach (SLATE) for bioprinting hydrogel tissues containing multiscale, entangled vascular networks (Chapter 3). Next, we apply perfusive heating of vascular networks to generate thermal profiles within three-dimensional tissues that mediate a spatiotemporal gene expression response through heat shock activation (HEAT, Chapters 4 & 5). Using these technologies, we explore hepatic tissue engineering (Chapter 6), demonstrating both: survival and engraftment of multi-material bioprinted hepatic tissues in a mouse model of liver injury, and genetic perturbation towards metabolic zonation through exogenous heat regulation.