Abstract
The field of 3-dimensional (3D) bioprinting has significantly expanded capabilities in producing precision-engineered hydrogel constructs, and recent years have seen the development of various stimuli-responsive bio- and photoinks. There is, however, a distinct lack of digital light processing (DLP)-compatible photoinks with thermoresponsivity. To remedy this, this work focuses on formulating and optimizing a versatile ink for DLP printing of thermoresponsive hydrogels, with numerous potential applications in tissue engineering, drug delivery, and adjacent biomedical fields. Photoink optimization was carried out using a multifactorial study design. The optimized photoink yielded crosslinked hydrogels with strong variations in hydrophobicity (contact angles of 44.4° <LCST, 71.0° >LCST), indicating marked thermoresponsivity. Mechanical- and rheological characterization of the printed hydrogels showed significant changes above the LCST: storage- and loss moduli both increased and loss tangent and compressive modulus decreased above this temperature (P ≤ 0.01). The highly cytocompatible hydrogel microwell arrays yielded both single- and multilayer spheroids with human dermal fibroblasts (HDFs) and HeLa cells successfully. Evaluation of the release of encapsulated model macro- (bovine serum albumin, BSA) and small molecule (rhodamine B) drugs in a buffer solution showed an interestingly inverted thermoresponsive release profile with >80% release at room temperature and about 50-60% release above the gels' LCST. All told, the optimized ink holds great promise for multiple biomedical applications including precise and high-resolution fabrication of complex tissue structures, development of smart drug delivery systems and 3D cell culture.