3D Bioprinting Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Neural Tissues Using a Novel Lab-on-a-Printer Technology

Date

2018-11

Authors

De la Vega, Laura
Gómez, Diego A. Rosas
Abelseth, Emily
Abelseth, Laila
Allisson da Silva, Victor
Willerth, Stephanie M.

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Applied Sciences

Abstract

Most neurological diseases and disorders lack true cures, including spinal cord injury (SCI). Accordingly, current treatments only alleviate the symptoms of these neurological diseases and disorders. Engineered neural tissues derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) can serve as powerful tools to identify drug targets for treating such diseases and disorders. In this work, we demonstrate how hiPSC-derived neural progenitor cells (NPCs) can be bioprinted into defined structures using Aspect Biosystems’ novel RX1 bioprinter in combination with our unique fibrin-based bioink in rapid fashion as it takes under 5 min to print four tissues. This printing process preserves high levels of cell viability (>81%) and their differentiation capacity in comparison to less sophisticated bioprinting methods. These bioprinted neural tissues expressed the neuronal marker, βT-III (45 ± 20.9%), after 15 days of culture and markers associated with spinal cord (SC) motor neurons (MNs), such as Olig2 (68.8 ± 6.9%), and HB9 (99.6 ± 0.4%) as indicated by flow cytometry. The bioprinted neural tissues expressed the mature MN marker, ChaT, after 30 days of culture as indicated by immunocytochemistry. In conclusion, we have presented a novel method for high throughput production of mature hiPSC-derived neural tissues with defined structures that resemble those found in the SC.

Description

Keywords

3D bioprinting, neural tissue, motor neurons, pluripotent stem cells, biomaterials, spinal cord injury, lab on a printer, fibrin

Citation

De la Vega, L., Rosas Gómez, Diego A., Abelseth, E., Abelseth, L., Allisson da Silva, V. & Willerth, S.M. (2018). 3D Bioprinting Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell- Derived Neural Tissues Using a Novel Lab-on-a-Printer Technology. Applied Sciences, 8(12), 2414. https://doi.org/10.3390/app8122414