Novel minimally-invasive in-situ 3D bioprinting platform for cardiac regeneration

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Currently, cardiac disorders (e.g., infarction, arrythmia, ischemia, etc.) are one of the leading causes of death according to WHO. In this project I aim to use interdisciplinary approaches to develop a novel in-situ 3D bioprinting (inSituBioprint) platform for cardiac regeneration, to directly fabricate patient-specific cardiac patches on host tissue. This will produce a new generation of 3D printing method for automatic implantation, which will drastically improve the surgical outcomes and patients' well-being. In the proposed study, a minimally-invasive 3D bioprinting platform will be designed to access tissue only through small incision, which fully recapitulates the concept of laparoscopy (keyhole surgery). Rather than following pre-planned printing paths, the proposed printer will sense, learn, and adapt to the curved surface during printing, and the height of the nozzle-substrate gap will be determined via impedance spectroscopic sensing and machine learning (ML) facilitated spectra analysis. Based on this platform, the conductive copolymer will be synthesized and optimised for in situ printing. Finally, I will investigate the therapeutic efficacy and regenerative potential of the conductive cardiac patch using three cardiac models: nonviable porcine heart (dimensionally similar to human heart), 3D cardiomyocyte culture, and cryoinjured arrythmia myocardial slice model. The proposed study will validate a clinically-relevant 3D bioprinting technique to accelerate the translation of surgical robotics and tissue regeneration, and eventually to benefit patient undergoing surgeries.