Laser assisted bioprinting of engineered tissue with high cell density and microscale organization

Over this decade, cell printing strategy has emerged as one of the promising approaches to organize cells in two and three dimensional engineered tissues. High resolution and high speed organization of cells are some of the key requirements for the successful fabrication of cell-containing two or three dimensional constructs. So far, none of the available cell printing technologies has shown an ability to concomitantly print cells at a cell-level resolution and at a kHz range speed. We have studied the effect of the viscosity of the bioink, laser energy, and laser printing speed on the resolution of cell printing. Accordingly, we demonstrate that a laser assisted cell printer can deposit cells with a microscale resolution, at a speed of 5 kHz and with computer assisted geometric control. We have successfully implemented such a cell printing precision to print miniaturized tissue like layouts with de novo high cell density and micro scale organization. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.