Sarker Sunandita, Wang Jinghui, Shah Shrey A, Jewell Christopher M, Rand-Yadin Kinneret, Janowski Miroslaw, Walczak Piotr, Liang Yajie, Sochol Ryan D
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
Program in Image Guided Neurointerventions, Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Proc IEEE Int Conf Micro Electro Mech Syst. 2024 Jan;2024:429-432. doi: 10.1109/mems58180.2024.10439381. Epub 2024 Feb 22.
A wide range of emerging biomedical applications and clinical interventions rely on the ability to deliver living cells hollow, high-aspect-ratio microneedles. Recently, microneedle arrays (MNA) have gained increasing interest due to inherent benefits for drug delivery; however, studies exploring the potential to harness such advantages for cell delivery have been impeded due to the difficulties in manufacturing high-aspect-ratio MNAs suitable for delivering mammalian cells. To bypass these challenges, here we leverage and extend our previously reported hybrid additive manufacturing (or "three-dimensional (3D) printing) strategy-., the combined the "Vat Photopolymerization (VPP)" technique, "Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)" 3D printing with "Two-Photon Direct Laser Writing (DLW)"-to 3D print hollow MNAs that are suitable for cell delivery investigations. Specifically, we 3D printed four sets of 650 m-tall MNAs corresponding to needle-specific inner diameters (IDs) of 25 m, 50 m, 75 m, and 100 m, and then examined the effects of these MNAs on the post-delivery viability of both dendritic cells (DCs) and HEK293 cells. Experimental results revealed that the 25 m-ID case led to a statistically significant reduction in post-MNA-delivery cell viability for both cell types; however, MNAs with needle-specific IDs ≥ 50 m were statistically indistinguishable from one another as well as conventional 32G single needles, thereby providing an important benchmark for MNA-mediated cell delivery.
广泛的新兴生物医学应用和临床干预依赖于递送活细胞的能力。中空、高纵横比的微针具有这种能力。最近，微针阵列（MNA）因其在药物递送方面的固有优势而越来越受到关注；然而，由于制造适合递送哺乳动物细胞的高纵横比MNA存在困难，探索利用这些优势进行细胞递送的研究受到了阻碍。为了克服这些挑战，我们在此利用并扩展了我们先前报道的混合增材制造（或“三维（3D）打印”）策略——将“光固化聚合（VPP）”技术、“液晶显示器（LCD）”3D打印与“双光子直接激光写入（DLW）”相结合——来3D打印适合细胞递送研究的中空MNA。具体而言，我们3D打印了四组高度为650μm的MNA，其针特定内径（ID）分别为25μm、50μm、75μm和100μm，然后研究了这些MNA对树突状细胞（DC）和HEK293细胞递送后活力的影响。实验结果表明，25μm内径的情况导致两种细胞类型在MNA递送后细胞活力均有统计学上的显著降低；然而，针特定内径≥50μm的MNA彼此之间以及与传统的32G单针在统计学上没有区别，从而为MNA介导的细胞递送提供了一个重要的基准。
