SUTD researchers utilize 3D printing to make heart cells from undifferentiated organisms

Overview

• Post By : Kumar Jeetendra


• Source: Singapore University of Technology and Design


• Date: 12 Aug,2020

All people start out from one cell that then divides to eventually form the embryo. Based on the signals sent with their own adjacent cells, these divided cells are then developed or differentiated into particular organs or tissues.

In regenerative medicine, controlling this differentiation from the lab is crucial as stem cells could be distinguished to allow for the growing of organs in vitro and replace damaged adult cells, especially those with very limited skills to replicate, like the brain or heart.

1 common approach scientists embrace when differentiating stem cells would be by using chemical stimulators. Although this method is very efficient to make a single type of cells, it lacks the ability to reproduce the complexity of living organisms, in which several cell types coexist and collaborate to form an organ.

Instead, motivated by the normal process of cell development, another system involves the packaging of stem cells into little cellular aggregates, or spheres known as embryoid bodies. Comparable to actual embryos, the cell-cell interaction within embryoid bodies is the main driver of differentiation. In the creation of the embryoid bodies, it had been found that parameters like cell quantities, size, and sphericity of the embryoid body influenced the types of cells that are produced.

However, as scientists have yet to be able to restrain those parameters, they have had to laboriously create large numbers of embryoid bodies also select specific ones with appropriate characteristics to be analyzed.

To address this challenge, researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) turned to additive manufacturing to control stem cell differentiation in embryoid bodies. Their research study was printed in Bioprinting.

They used the devices to demonstrate unprecedented precision in the directed differentiation of stem cells through the formation of embryoid bodies (refer to picture ). In their study, they successfully regulated the parameters for enhancing the creation of cardiomyocytescells which are found in the heart.
“The area of additive production is growing in an unrivaled pace. We are seeing levels of accuracy, speed and price that were unthinkable only a couple of years ago. What we have demonstrated is that 3D printing has reached the point of geometrical precision where it is able to control the outcome of stem cell differentiation. And in doing so, we’re equipping regenerative medication to more advance together with the accelerated rate of the additive manufacturing industry,” said chief investigator Assistant Professor Javier G. Fernandez in SUTD.

The use of 3D printing in biology has been strongly focused on the printing of artificial tissues using cell laden cells, to build artificial organs ‘piece by piece’. Now, we have demonstrated that 3D printing has the potential for it to be used in a bio-inspired approach in which we can control cells to grow in a lab just as they grow in vivo.”-Rupambika Das, PhD student from SUTD, first author