Whipping cream inspires better tissue regeneration tools

Whipping cream might sound like a tasty treat, but to co-author Ali Tamayol, it was the inspiration for improving bioinks for bioprinting.

In an era of regenerative medicine, researchers are exploring the use of bioinks to create scaffolds that can encourage tissue growth. Typically, this is done by 3D bioprinting hydrogels into various structures.

However, hydrogels have pores smaller than the size of a cell, which limits the speed of cellular ingrowth. To overcome this barrier, Tamayol and his colleagues turned to whipping cream.

“Each time that I was eating whipped cream for breakfast or using shaving foam, I was reflecting on how the foams are easy to apply, can form complex shapes, and are highly porous,” said Tamayol. “I thought it could be interesting to have our scaffolding materials function the same way.”

Agitating photocrosslinkable gelatin solutions in a mixer, the researchers created a foam full of microbubbles that could be used as a colloidal 3D bioprinter-friendly bioink. The introduction of microbubbles gave the bioink much larger pore sizes and was found to be easier to print than regular gelatin inks.

“The most exciting observation was that after implantation, the foam scaffolds led to rapid cell ingrowth, vascularization, and tissue regeneration,” Tamayol said. “Specifically, in animal models with volumetric muscle loss, a significant tissue regeneration and functional recovery was detected.”

This is a major improvement over regular hydrogels, where no tissue ingrowth is usually observed. The researchers hope the work can be used to treat various musculoskeletal injuries and in other clinical applications. The researchers are hoping to perform clinical trials soon.

Source: “Colloidal multiscale porous adhesive (bio)inks facilitate scaffold integration,” by Azadeh Mostafavi, Mohamadmahdi Samandari, Mehran Karvar, Mahsa Ghovvati, Yori Endo, Indranil Sinha, Nasim Annabi, and Ali Tamayol, Applied Physics Reviews (2021). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0062823 .