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In Situ 3D Printing: Opportunities with Silk Inks
Journal article   Peer reviewed

In Situ 3D Printing: Opportunities with Silk Inks

Francesca Agostinacchio, Xuan Mu, Sandra Dirè, Antonella Motta and David L Kaplan
Trends in biotechnology (Regular ed.), Vol.39(7), pp.719-730
07/2021
DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2020.11.003
PMCID: PMC8169713
PMID: 33279280
url
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/8169713View
Open Access

Abstract

In situ 3D printing is an emerging technique designed for patient-specific needs and performed directly in the patient’s tissues in the operating room. While this technology has progressed rapidly, several improvements are needed to push it forward for widespread utility, including ink formulations and optimization for in situ context. Silk fibroin inks emerge as a viable option due to the diverse range of formulations, aqueous processability, robust and tunable mechanical properties, and self-assembly via biophysical adsorption to avoid exogenous chemical or photochemical sensitizer additives, among other features. In this review, we focus on this new frontier of 3D in situ printing for tissue regeneration, where silk is proposed as candidate biomaterial ink due to the unique and useful properties of this protein polymer. In vitro 3D printing techniques have challenges that limit their clinical translation, including multistep processes, mismatches with patient-specific defects, risk of contamination, and postprocessing manipulation requirements.In situ 3D printing, the next frontier for 3D printing, aims to fabricate new tissues and organs in vivo, in the surgical setting, directly in the patient.Inks remain a challenge for this transition to in situ 3D printing, requiring fast gelation, high shape fidelity, minimal if any postprocessing, robust mechanical properties tunable to the target tissue, and biocompatibility.Versatile and appropriate inks, such as those developed from silk fibroin, offer a foundation for this translation, based on their unique amphiphilic structure, versatility in physical crosslinking, mechanical properties, biocompatibility, and tunable degradation.
in situ 3D printing ink silk

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