Tissue Engineering Lab/ Faculty of Medicine

Tissue & organ printing: the future in tissue engineering ?

Hybrid bioprintingBiofabrication of complex or vascularized tissue

Hybrid bioprinting

Self-assembling spheroids

Pre-processing

BiofabricationPost-

processing

• 3D in vitro models

• Organ-on-a-chip

• Regenerative medicine

Patient-specific biomimetic tissue analogues

PhDs Mendy Minne – Prof. Heidi Declercq

Contact: heidi.declercq1@kuleuven.be

✓ Disease modeling

✓ Personalized medicine

✓ Drug screening

Maturation phase I Maturation phase II

Microtissues Smart biomaterials External stimuli

References: Mironov V. et al. Biomaterials 2009; De Moor L. et al. Biofabrication 2018; De Moor L. et al. Annals of

Biomedical Engineering 2019; Vercruysse C. et al. In preparation; Roosens A. et al. Journal of Tissue Engineering

and Regenerative Medicine 2019; Colle J. et al. Journal of Materials Science-Materials in Medicine 2020

Microtissues

• Non-adhesive agarose microwells

• High-throughput

• Pores 200-400 µm (2865-1585/microwell)

• Uniform & printable size

Microtissues

Spheroid generation

Tissue specific spheroids

Cartilage FibrocartilageBoneValvular tissue Adipose tissue

• Engineering of 3D living structures

• Precise placing of different cells, extracellular

matrix and biomolecules in 3D

• Layer-by-layer additive manufacturing

Bioprinting

Smart biomaterials & external stimuli

Ink

• Bioinks with electroactive components

• Tissue fusion permissive hydrogels

• Patient-derived bioinks

• 3D aligned guiding systems

Cell modalities

Bioink

Tissues:

• Repeating functional units

• Self-organizing systems

Vascularized spheroids

Lineage-specific differentiation of stem & primary cells

Self-assembling of endothelial & supporting cells

✓ Multi- and heterocellular spheroids

✓ Increasing complexity

✓ 3D mimick of tissue

PDMS mold PDMS mold agarose microwell

liquid agarose