Platform Speeds 3D Bioprinting of Organ-Scale Vessels

Zachary Sexton and colleagues have developed a design platform that can rapidly generate vasculature trees that can then be bioprinted and used to successfully perfuse living tissue constructs. The platform improves the design and production of complex vascular networks that will be needed for manufacturing human tissues and organs in the future. As the researchers note, the manufacture of tissues with multiple cell types has improved recently. But like a city needs a full complement of main highways, side streets, and alleyways to carry traffic its furthest reaches, complex geometric tissues and organs need a vasculature network that will reach and adequately perfuse blood throughout the tissue – a design feat that has remained challenging for researchers. Sexton et al. leveraged algorithmic advances to create a synthetic toolkit that can generate organ-spanning tree networks within minutes (a 230-fold acceleration over current platform speeds), with the ability to simulate flow patterns and pressures. The researchers created computational vasculature networks for more than 200 engineered and anatomical models. In a bioreactor, the researchers also tested the perfusion of 3D bioprinted networks, which improved the cell viability of the printed tissue constructs.