Yang Yang, Xu Runze, Wang Chengjin, Guo Yuzhi, Sun Wei, Ouyang Liliang
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
Biomanufacturing and Rapid Forming Technology Key Laboratory of Beijing, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
Int J Bioprint. 2022 Aug 25;8(4):611. doi: 10.18063/ijb.v8i4.611. eCollection 2022.
As a major extracellular matrix component within the skin, collagen has been widely used to engineer human skin tissues. However, most collagen is extracted from animals. Here, we introduced recombinant human type III collagen (rhCol3) as a bioactive component to formulate bioinks for the bioprinting of a full-thickness human skin equivalent. Human dermal fibroblasts were encapsulated in the gelatin methacryloyl-rhCol3 composite bioinks and printed on a transwell to form the dermis layer, on which human epidermal keratinocytes were seeded to perform an air-liquid interface culture for 6 weeks. After optimizing the bioink formulation and bioprinting process, we investigated the effect of rhCol3 on skin tissue formation. The results suggest that a higher concentration of rhCol3 would enhance the growth of both cells, resulting in a more confluent (~100%) spreading of the epidermal keratinocytes at an early stage (3 days), compared to the rhCol3-free counterpart. Moreover, in an experiment, adding rhCol3 in the hydrogel formulation would contribute to the skin wound healing process. Taken together, we conclude that rhCol3 could act as a functional bioink component to promote basic skin cellular processes for skin tissue engineering.
作为皮肤内主要的细胞外基质成分，胶原蛋白已被广泛用于构建人体皮肤组织。然而，大多数胶原蛋白是从动物身上提取的。在此，我们引入重组人III型胶原蛋白（rhCol3）作为生物活性成分来制备生物墨水，用于全层人体皮肤等效物的生物打印。将人真皮成纤维细胞封装在甲基丙烯酰化明胶-rhCol3复合生物墨水中，并打印在Transwell上以形成真皮层，然后在其上接种人表皮角质形成细胞进行气液界面培养6周。在优化生物墨水配方和生物打印过程后，我们研究了rhCol3对皮肤组织形成的影响。结果表明，与不含rhCol3的对照物相比，较高浓度的rhCol3会促进两种细胞的生长，导致表皮角质形成细胞在早期（3天）更汇合（约100%）地铺展。此外，在一项实验中，在水凝胶配方中添加rhCol3有助于皮肤伤口愈合过程。综上所述，我们得出结论，rhCol3可作为一种功能性生物墨水成分，促进皮肤组织工程的基本皮肤细胞过程。
