3D Biofabrication

Week 09: For this week’s homework, led by Nina Tandon of EpiBone, we will answer 3 problem excersises that explore what some of the design considerations looks like in tissue engineering practice.

Given that the same factors that determine cell fate and function in vivo also determine the progression of cell differentiation in vitro, our ability to grow a 3-dimensional tissue in the laboratory is therefore directly related to our ability, as engineers, to recapitulate the natural microenvironment. This principle is referred to as the biomimetic paradigm (i.e. “copying nature”). Hence, for tissue engineering applications, major efforts have been invested into characterizing native tissue environments, and describing these environments by parameters that may be recapitulated experimentally (e.g. the convection of blood through perfusion, the stiffness/porosity of scaffolds, the exposure of cells to a mechanical loading or electrical field stimulation, etc).