Design and Fabrication of Human Skin by Three-Dimensional Bioprinting

Abstract

Advancements in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering have created the possibility of regenerating the damaged organs and tissues back into functional organs or tissues by taking advantage of the support offered by 3D bioprinting. For this project, a comprehensive literature review has been performed in order to understand the 3D bioprinting approaches used for skin reconstruction. The exploration of concepts such as 3D bioprinting for the construction of skin layer by layer, using the two different cell types of fibroblasts (FBs) and keratinocytes (KCs) and techniques like immunofluorescence and histological characterization of 3D printed human skin, was carried out to assess and evaluate the changes. The aim of this project was to perform a review of the use of photocurable gelatin as a bioink for the design and fabrication of human skin by three-dimensional bioprinting, as well as to explore a series of bioprinting methods. Photocurable gelatin was chosen due to its unique features with biocompatibilities, non-immunogenicity and rapid biodegradability for skin 3D-bioprinting technologies, such as gelatine/hyaluronan, gelatin/fibrinogen and gelatin/alginate/fibrinogen. These complex models will allow for the most essential advancements of understanding skin in order to engineer the better wound grafts, and the transdermal and topical development of tools. The project protocols, therefore, imply that 3D bioprinting techniques have the better-controlled skin tissue dimensions. The work we describe here includes the formulation, optimization and application of 3D-bioprinting platforms for biological tissues and organ engineering using human skin. With effective control of the number of layers and cell densities and an accurate site in the generation of skin models, we would have reproduced the major key biological and morphological features of human skin in vivo. The 3D-engineered skin has many benefits, making it a powerful tool for the investigation of skin pathogenesis and for understanding the biology of the epidermis for enhancing the establishment of stratified and well-defined 3D construction of the fabricated epidermis that regulate skin regeneration, and for supporting the generation of skin fabrication from any type of species and from any contextual genes.