Development of bioink formulation for 3D printing of tissue models

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Everyone has needed pharmaceuticals at some point for an illness. Before they were used to treat humans, they were tested on animals. Animal testing is expensive, unethical and inaccurate when it comes to human responses to drugs. Yet, it is the method of choice for drug screening prior to clinical trial. 9215581 Canada Inc. (Ourotech) is aiming to solve this problem by 3D printing human tissues that are more representative of drug effects on humans and do not require animal experimentation. Ourotech is creating a bioink in a syringe that can be attached to any 3D printer/dispensing system to 3D print living human cells. The inks contain everything necessary to protect, print, signal and feed cells, so pharmaceutical companies just need to add the cells, culture after printing, and test their drugs. The proposed project focuses on a main ingredient of the bioink, which is the crosslinkable polymer for making 3D hydrogel scaffolds. This is the first joint effort between Ourotech and the Tang lab at the University of Waterloo. The funding will support the development of chemical approaches to generate novel hyaluronic acid-based polymers, which crosslink in a two-stage process, and thus enable biocompatible printing and hardening of 3D structures. This technology will lead to ink formulations that can potentially be used to create various cancer models, such as lung cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, and potentially brain cancer.